Design and measurement of 450MHz LNA utilizing 0.13um RF CMOS process

A low-noise amplifier (LNA) integrated circuit (IC) has been designed and implemented on a 0.13um RF CMOS process technology. The LNA was designed to resonate at 450MHz frequency. This paper presents the design methodology and compares the simulated and measurement results of the cascode LNA with inductive degeneration. There were expected mismatch between simulation and measurement data, thus some of the matching elements were intentionally placed outside of the chip so adjustment can be done using external components. The overall design methodology employed in this work gives certain confidence that if the LNA resonates at intended frequency with specific input network matching, the same input network matching arrangement can be applied at the input of the same LNA at front-end of a complete Receive chain. On simulation, Noise Figure (NF) of the LNA was simulated at 1.23dB and Gain at 28.17dB.