DC ~ 10.5 GHz complimentary metal oxide semiconductor distributed amplifier with RC gate terminal network for ultra-wideband pulse radio systems

A DC ~ 10.5 GHz complimentary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) distributed amplifier (DA) with flat and low noise figure (NF), flat and high power gain (S₂₁) and small group delay (GD) variation for ultra-wideband (UWB) pulse radio systems using standard 0.18 μm CMOS technology is demonstrated. Flat and low NF was achieved by adopting the proposed resistor capacitor (RC) terminal network with 140 Ω terminal resistance over the frequency band of interest (instead of the traditional 50 Ω terminal resistance or the recently proposed resistor inductor (RL) terminal network) for the gate transmission line. Besides, flat and high S₂₁ was achieved by using cascoded transistors as the gain cell. Over the DC ~ 10.5 GHz band, the DA consumed 29.16 mW and achieved flat and high |S₂₁| of 10.5 + 1.4 dB, flat and low NF of 3.2 + 0.3 dB and excellent phase linearity (the GD variation was only +13.8 ps), one of the best NF and phase linearity results ever reported for a CMOS DA or wideband low-noise amplifier (LNA) with bandwidth greater than 7.5 GHz.