A 15 GHz, 1.8V, variable-gain, modified Cherry-Hooper amplifier

Author

Abbott, Justin ; Plett, Calvin ; Rogers, John W M

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electron., Carleton Univ., Ottawa, Ont., Canada

fYear

2005

fDate

18-21 Sept. 2005

Firstpage

645

Lastpage

648

Abstract

This paper describes the design of an inductor-less variable-gain amplifier cell with a bandwidth over 15 GHz. A high bandwidth is maintained even when the amplifier cells are cascaded, for example in implementing a limiting amplifier. The amplifier cell is implemented using a modified Cherry-Hooper architecture that utilizes active negative feedback to obtain a variable gain from -4 to +17dB for 16 cascaded cells, and an adjustable bandwidth from 9GHz to 15GHz per cell with a nominal bandwidth of 12.4GHz. By avoiding the use of broadbanding techniques, such as peaking inductors, area is greatly reduced. The optimized amplifier cell occupies an area of 93μm by 42μm, and is critically damped to limit peaking to 0dB.

Keywords

cascade networks; feedback amplifiers; microwave amplifiers; -4 to 17 dB; 1.8 V; 42 micron; 9 to 15 GHz; 93 micron; active negative feedback; adjustable bandwidth; amplifier cells; cascaded cells; modified Cherry-Hooper amplifier; variable-gain amplifier; Bandwidth; Broadband amplifiers; Circuits; Distributed amplifiers; Frequency response; Gain control; Inductors; Negative feedback; Preamplifiers; Transmitters;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Custom Integrated Circuits Conference, 2005. Proceedings of the IEEE 2005

Print_ISBN

0-7803-9023-7

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/CICC.2005.1568752

Filename

1568752