A 1.6 mW 5.4 GHz transformer-feedback gm-boosted current-reuse LNA in 0.18/μm CMOS

A fully-integrated LNA in 0.18/xm CMOS simultaneously achieves high gain, low noise figure (NF), good third-order input intercept linearity (IIP3), and low DC bias current consumption: 19 dB, 2.4 dB, -14.2 dBm and 1.3 mA, respectively, from a 1.2 V supply. The single-ended LNA uses a common-gate common-source (CG-CS) topology and operates at 5.4 GHz for WLAN applications. Using g_m-boosting, current-reuse and transformer-feedback techniques, the LNA mitigates several design issues seen in the widely used common-source common-source current-reuse (CS-CS) LNAs and improves the IIP3 of CG-CS schemes by 6 dB, without increasing power and area consumption.