Jen-How Lee

Analysis and Design of a CMOS UWB LNA With Dual-

A wideband low-noise amplifier (LNA) based on the current-reused cascade configuration is proposed. The wideband input-impedance matching was achieved by taking advantage of the resistive shunt-shunt feedback in conjunction with a parallel LC load to make the input network equivalent to two parallel RLC-branches, i.e., a second-order wideband bandpass filter. Besides, both the inductive series- and shunt-peaking techniques are used for bandwidth extension. Theoretical analysis shows that both the frequency response of input matching and noise figure (NF) can be described by second-order functions with quality factors as parameters. The CMOS ultra-wideband LNA dissipates 10.34-mW power and achieves S 11 below -8.6 dB, S 22 below -10 dB, S 12 below -26 dB, flat S 21 of 12.26 ± 0.63 dB, and flat NF of 4.24 ± 0.5 dB over the 3.1-10.6-GHz band of interest. Besides, good phase linearity property (group-delay variation is only ±22 ps across the whole band) is also achieved. The analytical, simulated, and measured results agree well with one another.

RLC

This paper reports the design and analysis of 21-29-GHz CMOS low-noise amplifier (LNA), balun and mixer in a standard 0.18-μm CMOS process for ultra-wideband automotive radar systems. To verify the proposed LNA, balun, and mixer architectures, a simplified receiver front-end comprising an LNA, a double-balanced Gilbert-cell-based mixer, and two Marchand baluns was implemented. The wideband Marchand baluns can convert the single RF and local oscillator (LO) signals to nearly perfect differential signals over the 21-29-GHz band. The performance of the mixer is improved with the current-bleeding technique and a parallel resonant inductor at the differential outputs of the RF transconductance stage. Over the 21-29-GHz band, the receiver front-end exhibits excellent noise figure of 4.6±0.5 dB, conversion gain of 23.7±1.4 dB, RF port reflection coefficient lower than -8.8 dB, LO-IF isolation lower than -47 dB, LO-RF isolation lower than -55 dB, and RF-IF isolation lower than -35.5 dB. The circuit occupies a chip area of 1.25×1.06 mm2, including the test pads. The dc power dissipation is only 39.2 mW.

-Branch Wideband Input Matching Network

A 3.1-10.6 GHz ultra-wideband low-noise amplifier (UWB LNA) with excellent phase linearity property (group-delay-variation is only plusmn17.4 ps across the whole band) using standard 0.18 mum CMOS technology is reported. To achieve high and flat gain and small group-delay-variation at the same time, the inductive peaking technique is adopted in the output stage for bandwidth enhancement. The UWB LNA dissipates 22.7 mW power and achieves input return loss (S22) of -9.7 ~ -19.9 dB, output return loss (S22) of -8.4 ~ -22.5 dB, flat forward gain (S22) of 11.4 plusmn 0.4 dB, reverse isolation (S12) of 40 ~ -48 dB, and noise figure (NF) of 4.12 ~ 5.16 dB over the 3.1-10.6 GHz band of interest. Good 1-dB compression point (P1dB) of -7.86 dBm and input third-order inter-modulation point (IIP3) of 0.72 dBm are achieved at 6.4 GHz. The chip area is only 681 mum times 657 mum excluding the test pads.

Design and Analysis of a 21–29-GHz Ultra-Wideband Receiver Front-End in 0.18-

A 3.1-10.6-GHz ultra-wideband low-noise amplifier (UWB LNA) with excellent phase linearity property (group-delay-variation is only plusmn16.7 ps across the whole band) using standard 0.13 mum CMOS technology is reported. To achieve high and flat gain and small group-delay-variation at the same time, the inductive peaking technique is adopted in the output stage for bandwidth enhancement. The UWB LNA dissipates 10.68 mW power and achieves input return loss (S11) of -17.5 ~ -33.6 dB, output return loss (S22) of -14.4 ~ -16.3 dB, flat forward gain (S21) of 7.92 plusmn 0.23 dB, and reverse isolation (S12) of -25.8 ~ -41.9 dB over the 3.1-10.6 GHz band of interest. State-of-the-art noise figure (NF) of 2.5 dB is achieved at 10.5 GHz. The measured 1-dB compression point (P1dB) and input third-order inter-modulation point (IIP3) were -14 dBm and -4 dBm, respectively, at 6 GHz.

\mu

In this paper, we demonstrate that the noise figure (NF) of a P+ active-area (AA) mesh inductor is much better than that of its standard version. In a P+AA mesh inductor, the AA with P+ implantation is added beneath it in the shape of a mesh to reduce its capacitive and magnetic coupling with the silicon substrate. Two 3.1-10.6-GHz CMOS ultrawideband (UWB) low-noise amplifiers (LNAs), one with P+ AA mesh inductors (AA mesh UWB LNA) and the other with standard inductors (STD UWB LNA), are implemented to study the effect of the P+ AA mesh on their performances. The results show that a 0.62-dB improvement in NF (from 0.8 to 0.18 dB) was achieved at 10.5 GHz for the input inductor LG1 if the P+ AA mesh had been added beneath it. In addition, the AA mesh UWB LNA achieved a low and flat NF of 3.365 plusmn 0.225 dB over the band of interest, notably better than that (4.64 plusmn 0.52 dB) of the STD UWB LNA.

m CMOS Technology

A 60-GHz receiver front-end with an integrated 180° out-of-phase Wilkinson power divider using standard 0.13 µm CMOS technology is reported. The receiver front-end comprises a wideband low-noise amplifier (LNA) with 12.4-dB gain, a current-reused bleeding mixer, a baseband amplifier, and a 180° out-of-phase Wilkinson power divider. The receiver front-end consumed 50.2 mW and achieved input return loss at RF port better than −10 dB for frequencies from 52.3 GHz to 62.3 GHz. At IF of 20 MHz, the receiver front-end achieved maximum conversion gain of 18.7 dB at RF of 56 GHz. The corresponding 3-dB bandwidth (ω3dB) of RF is 9.8 GHz (50.8 GHz to 60.6 GHz). The measured minimum noise figure (NF) was 9 dB at 58 GHz, an excellent result for a 60-GHz-band CMOS receiver front-end. In addition, the measured input 1-dB compression point (P1dB) and input third-order inter-modulation point (IIP3) are −20.8 dBm and −12 dBm, respectively, at 60 GHz. These results demonstrate the adopted receiver front-end architecture is very promising for high-performance 60-GHz-band RFIC applications.

An Excellent Phase-Linearity 3.1-10.6 GHz CMOS UWB LNA Using Standard 0.18 μm CMOS Technology

In this paper, a polysilicon PGS (pattern ground shield) pattern, which located exactly inside and outside the spiral metal wires of the RF transformers/ inductors in standard RF BiCMOS technology, was demonstrated. The proposed PGS pattern can effectively improve the drawback, i.e. large parasitics between the transformers/inductors and the PGS pattern, due to no direct overlap between them. The results show a 56.5% (from 6.12 to 9.58) and a 55.7% (from 5.55 to 8.64) increase in Q factor, a 18.2 % (from 0.67 to 0.79) and a 21.4% (from 0.66 to 0.8) increase in GAmax, a 0.73 dB (from 1.74 dB to 1.01 dB) and a 0.85 dB (from 1.82 dB to 0.97 dB) decrease in NFmin, and a 18.4% (from 0.69 to 0.82) and a 21.2% (from 0.69 to 0.83) increase in magnetic-coupling factor kim were achieved at 4.2 and 5.2 GHz, respectively, for a bifilar transformer with an overall dimension 230 times 215 mum2 in standard BiCMOS process with substrate thickness of 318 mum, and substrate resistance of 10 Omega-cm. Furthermore, compared with the traditional PGS pattern, a 9.9% (from 10.1 GHz to 11.1 GHz) increase in resonant frequency fSR was achieved. These results means the proposed PGS pattern is very help for RF engineers to design high-performance RF transformers for ultra-low-voltage high-performance transformer-feedback LNAs and VCOs, and other RF-ICs which include transformers for SOC applications

A 2.5-dB NF 3.1–10.6-GHz CMOS UWB LNA with small group-delay-variation

A 3.1~10.6 GHz ultra-wideband low-noise amplifier (UWB LNA) with excellent phase linearity property (group-delay variation is only ±15.8 ps across the whole band) using standard 0.18 μm CMOS technology is reported. Both high and flat power gain (S21) and low and flat noise figure (NF) frequency responses are achieved by tuning the pole frequencies and pole quality factors of the second-order gain and NF frequency responses to approximate the maximally flat condition simultaneously. The LNA dissipates 11.8 mW power and achieves input return loss (S11) smaller than -10.2 dB, high and flat S21 of 12.52±0.81 dB, and low and flat NF of 2.87±0.19 dB over the 3.1~10.6 GHz band. To the authors knowledge, this is one of the lowest NFs ever reported for a 3.1~10.6 GHz UWB CMOS LNA. The measured 1-dB compression point (P1dB) and input third-order inter-modulation point (IIP3) are -16 dBm and -6.5 dBm, respectively, at 6 GHz.

Low Noise-Figure

A low-power 3.2~9.7 GHz low-noise amplifier (LNA) with excellent stop-band rejection by 0.18 μm CMOS technology is demonstrated. High stop-band rejection is achieved by using a passive band-pass filter with three finite transmission zeros (in the input terminal of the common-gate LNA), one of which (ωz1 = 0.9 GHz) is in the low-frequency stop-band and the other two (ωz3 and ωz5) are in the high-frequency stop-band. In addition, an active notch filter is used in the output terminal of the LNA to introduce another low-frequency stop-band transmission zero (ωz2) at 2.4 GHz. The LNA consumes 4.68 mW and achieves S11 of -10~ -39.5 dB, S21 of 9.3±1.5 dB, and an average NF of 6 dB over the 3.2~9.7 GHz band. Moreover, the stop-band interferers can be effectively attenuated. The measured stop-band rejection is better than 21.6 dB for frequencies DC~2.5 GHz and 11.2~20 GHz. The corresponding stop-band rejection at 0.9 GHz, 1.8 GHz, 2.4 GHz, 17.6 GHz, and 19.5 GHz are 53.3 dB, 26.4 dB, 26.5 dB, 60 dB, and 59.5 dB, respectively.

{\rm P}^{+}

This paper presents the design and analysis of a 21∼29 GHz CMOS receiver front-end (RFE) in a standard 0.18 µm CMOS process for ultra-wideband (UWB) automotive radar systems. The circuit comprises a low-noise amplifier (LNA), a double-balanced Gilbert-cell mixer, and two Marchand baluns. The performance of the mixer was improved with the current-bleeding technique and a parallel resonant inductor in the input trans-conductance stage. The wideband Marchand baluns can not only convert the single RF and LO signals to nearly perfect differential signals over the 21∼29 GHz band but also enhance the port-to-port isolations. Over the 21∼29 GHz automotive radar band, the RFE exhibited excellent NF of 4.6±0.5 dB, conversion gain of 23.7±1.4 dB, RF port reflection coefficient of −8.8∼−16.8 dB, LO-IF isolation of −47∼−52.3 dB, LO-RF isolation of −55∼−70.5 dB, and RF-IF isolation of −35.5∼−45.4 dB. The circuit occupied a chip area of 1.15×0.93 mm², i.e. 1.08 mm², excluding the test pads. The dc power dissipation was only 39.2 mW.