A 0.4V, 790µW CMOS low noise amplifier in sub-threshold region at 1.5GHz

Subject Areas : Majlesi Journal of Telecommunication Devices

Amin Zafarian ¹ , Iraj Kalali Fard ² , Abbas Golmakani ³ , Jalil Shirazi ⁴

1 - A. Zafarian is with the Electrical Engineering Department, Islamic Azad University Branch Of Arak, Iran (phone: [phone] ; mobile: [phone] ; e-mail: amin_zafarian@ yahoo.ca).
2 - I. kalali Fard is with the Institute of Communication Systems and Data Processing, RWTH Aachen University, Germany (e-mail: [e-mail]).
3 - A. Golmakani is assistant professor of the Electrical Engineering Department, Sadjad Institute for Higher Education, Mashhad, Iran (e-mail: [e-mail]).
4 - J. Shirazi. is with the Electrical Engineering Department, Islamic Azad University Branch Of Gonabad, Iran (e-mail: [e-mail]).

Received: 2012-11-26 Accepted : 2012-11-26 Published : 2013-03-01

Keywords: en,

Abstract :

A fully integrated low-noise amplifier (LNA) with 0.4V supply voltage and ultra low power consumption at 1.5GHz by folded cascode structure is presented. The proposed LNA is designed in a TSMC 0.18 µm CMOS technology, in which all transistors are biased in sub-threshold region. Through the use of  proposed circuit for gain enhancement in this structure and using forward body bias technique, a very high figure of merit is achieved, in comparison to similar structures. The LNA provides a power gain of 14.7dB with a noise figure of 2.9dB while consuming only 790µW dc power. Also, impedance matching of input and output of the circuit in its operating frequency is desirable and in the whole bandwidth of the circuit, input and output isolation is below -33dB.

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