A CMOS distributed amplifier with active input balun using GBW and linearity enhancing techniques

A CMOS highly linear 818 GHz-GBW distributed amplifier (DA) with distributed active input balun is presented. Each g_m cell within the DA employs dual-output 2-stage g_m topology that improves gain and linearity without adversely affecting bandwidth and power. Fabricated in a 65 nm LP CMOS process, the 0.9 mm² DA achieves 22 dB of gain and 10 dBm of P_1dB while consuming 97 mW from a 1.3 V supply. A distributed balun using the same g_m cell achieves >;70 GHz bandwidth and 4 dB gain with 19.5 mW power consumption from 1.3 V supply.