A 1.8 V – 400 MHz programmable gain amplifier in 0.35 μm CMOS

This paper presents a new low-voltage very-high- frequency programmable gain amplifier based on a very simple pseudo-differential pair with common-mode feedforward. Designed in a 0.35 mum CMOS technology, it is very compact in terms of silicon area and consumes less than 2.1 mW from a single 1.8 V supply. The programmable gain varies linearly in-dB from 0 to 12 dB in 6 dB steps through a 2-bit word. Simulation results show an almost constant -3 dB bandwidth of 400 MHz and total harmonic distortion figures are below -60 dB over the whole gain range at 100 MHz for a 0.2 V_p-p differential output.