A 1.5-V 2.4 GHz CMOS variable gain front-end for bluetooth and wireless LAN applications

This paper describes a 1.5-V 2.4 GHz variable gain front-end in a 0.18-mum CMOS process. The front-end achieves conversion gains of 27.0 dB and 15.0 dB in the high gain mode (HGM) and low gain mode (LGM), respectively. It also achieves input return loss, Sn, of -10.18 and -15.31 dB in the HGM and LGM, respectively. In the HGM and LGM, the front-end acquires double side band (DSB) NFs of 4.0 dB and 9.4 dB, respectively. In the linearity response, the front-end achieves in-band IIP3 is 0.41 dBm in the HGM. The front end consumes only 10.49 mA of current from a 1.5-V supply.