An ultra-wideband baseband front-end

A 900 MHz bandwidth front-end with a -100dB/decade roll-off for a baseband pulse-based BPSK ultra-wideband transceiver is designed and tested in 1.8 V 0.18 μm CMOS. Trade-offs in noise figure (NF) and voltage gain within broadband power-matched and un-matched (voltage-boosted) conditions of the front-end are discussed. The front-end achieves 38 dB of gain and 10.2 dB of average NF in the power-matched case, and 42 dB of gain and 7.9 dB of average NF in the un-matched case. Theory and measurements of the matching techniques and microwave design parameters upon NF and UWB signal to sinusoidal interferer ratios are also presented.