A 1.5–7.5GHz low power low noise amplifier (LNA) design using subthreshold technique for Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) application

A novel wide band low power low noise amplifier using subthreshold technique is presented in this paper. This LNA built with Common-Gate (CG) input stage for wide band input matching and a Common Source (CS) - Common Gate (CG) cascode stage for gain boosting. Power reduction is achieved by driving the front end CG transistor in sub-threshold region and input matching is done by LC circuit instead of traditional CG method (Rs=1/g_m). The circuit is simulated using Spectra-RF simulator in 0.18μm CMOS technology, and achieved 13.5-14.5 dB (7.5 to 8.5 dB + 6dB loss in buffer) gain over entire band of 1.5-7.5GHz with a 5-10.5dB NF while consuming 4.9mW of power from 1.8V supply.