A reconfigurable programmable-gain amplifier with gain step adjustment and binary-weighted power consumption

A reconfigurable programmable-gain amplifier is presented in this paper. The designed PGA has two major advantages over the conventional designs: The gain step of the designed PGA can be adjusted by an analog-controlled voltage so that the trade-off between gain error and gain range can be relaxed; the power consumption of the PGA is binary-weighted, and thus the power efficiency is maximized. To achieve these advantages, a novel unit cell consuming ultra-low power with extremely accurate dB-linear characteristic is proposed. By cascading several of such unit cells in a binary-weighted manner, the proposed PGA is implemented.