• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.321-328
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• 2008

In this paper, variable gain amplifier(VGA) with a gain slope controller has been proposed and verified by circuit simulations and measurements. The proposed VGA has a gain control, gain slope switch and variable gain range. The input source coupled pair with diode connected load is used for VGA gain stage. The gain slope controller with switch can control VGA gain slope. The proposed VGA is fabricated in $0.18{\mu}m$ CMOS process for multi -standard wireless receiver. The proposed two stage VGA consumes min. 2.0 mW to max. 2.6 mW in gain control range and gives input IP3 of -3.77 dBm and NF of 28.7 dB at 1.8 V power supply under -25 dBm, 1 MHz input. The proposed VGA has 37 dB(-16 dB $\sim$ 21 dB) variable gain range, and 8 dB gain range control per 0.3 V control voltage, and can provide variable gain, positive and negative gain slope control, and gain range control. This VGA characteristics provide design flexibility in multi-standard wireless receiver.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
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• v.31 no.3A
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• pp.356-359
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• 2006

A monolithic SiGe HBT variable gain driver amplifier(VGDA) with high dB-linear gain control and high linearity has been developed as a driver amplifier with ground-shielded microstrip lines for 5-GHz transmitters. The VGDA consists of three blocks such as the cascode gain-control stage, fixed-gain output stage, and voltage control block. The circuit elements were optimized by using the Agilent Technologies' ADSs. The VGDA was implemented in STMicroelectronics' 0.35${\mu}m$ Si-BiCMOS process. The VGDA exhibits a dynamic gain control range of 34 dB with the control voltage range from 0 to 2.3 V in 5.15-5.35 GHz band. At 5.15 GHz, maximum gain and attenuation are 10.5 dB and -23.6 dB, respectively. The amplifier also produces a 1-dB gain-compression output power of -3 dBm and output third-order intercept point of 7.5 dBm. Input/output voltage standing wave ratios of the VGDA keep low and constant despite change in the gain-control voltage.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.31 no.11
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• pp.1077-1082
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• 2007

We present a micromechanical active amplifier, inspired from the principle of the outer hair cells in cochlea, amplifying both displacement and force. The present micromechanical active amplifier modulates the resonant carrier motion using the variable stiffness spring whose stiffness changes proportionally to the input motion. We design, fabricate, and characterize two types of the amplifiers A and B, each having the variable stiffness spring fur the maximum displacement gain and force gain, respectively. In the experimental study, the amplifier A shows the displacement gain of 5.62, which is 2.15 times larger than that of the amplifier 3. The amplifier B shows the force gain of 10.0, resulting in 1.26 times larger value compared to that of the amplifier A. We experimentally verify that the haircell-inspired micromechanical amplifiers are capable to amplify both displacement and force.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics and Information Engineers
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• v.51 no.12
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• pp.90-95
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• 2014

This paper presents a VHF/UHF-band variable gain low noise amplifier for multi-standard mobile TV tuners. A proposed VHF-band variable gain amplifier is composed of a resistive shunt-feedback low noise amplifier to remove external matching components, a single-to-differential amplifier with input PMOS transcoductors to improve low frequency noise performance, a variable shunt-feedback resistor and an attenuator to control variable gain range. A proposed UHF-band variable gain amplifier consists of a narrowband low noise amplifier with capacitive tuning to improve noise performance and interference rejection performance, a single-to-differential with gm gain control and an attenuator to adjust gain control range. The proposed VHF-band and UHF-band variable gain amplifier were designed in a $0.18{\mu}m$ RF CMOS technology and draws 22 mA and 17 mA from a 1.8 V supply voltage, respectively. The designed VHF-band and UHF-band variable gain amplifier show a voltage gain of 27 dB and 27 dB, a noise figure of 1.6-1.7 dB and 1.3-1.7 dB, OIP3 of 13.5 dBm and 16 dBm, respectively.

• JSTS:Journal of Semiconductor Technology and Science
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.336-343
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• 2011

This paper introduces a simple variable gain amplifier (VGA) structure that shows an inherently dB-linear gain control property. Requiring no additional components for dB-linear control, the structure is compact and power efficient. The designed two-stage VGA shows a gain control range of 60dB with the gain error in the range of ${\pm}0.4$ dB. The power consumption including the output buffer is 20.4 mW from 1.2 V supply voltage with bandwidth of 630 MHz. The prototype was fabricated in a 0.13 ${\mu}m$ CMOS process and the VGA core occupies 0.06 $mm^2$.

• Proceedings of the IEEK Conference
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• 1999.06a
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• pp.873-876
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• 1999

A variable gain amplifier(VGA) for wireless LAN is designed using active feedback. The amplifier is controlled by the gate voltage in the feedback path. This amplifier has more than 30㏈ gain variation and a improved linearity in the RF receiver block as input voltage increases. An active feedback topology is used by P-HEMT and is also analyzed for FET equivalent model.

• Journal of Korea Society of Industrial Information Systems
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• v.18 no.5
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• pp.1-8
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• 2013

This paper presents a variable gain amplifier(VGA) without passive devices. This VGA employes the architecture of current feedback amplifier and variable gain can be achieved by using the GM ratios of two trans-conductance(gm) circuits. To obtain linearity and high gain, it uses current division technique and source degeneration in feedback GM circuits. Input trans-conductance(GM) circuit was biased by using a tunable voltage controller to obtain variable gain. The prototype of the VGA is designed in $0.35{\mu}m$ CMOS technology and it is operating in sub-threshold region for low power consumption. The the gain of proposed VGA is varied from 23dB to 43dB, and current consumption is $2.82{\mu}A{\sim}3{\mu}A$ at 3.3V. The area of VGA is 1$120{\mu}m{\times}100{\mu}m$.

• JSTS:Journal of Semiconductor Technology and Science
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• v.14 no.5
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• pp.579-587
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• 2014

This paper presents a variable gain amplifier (VGA) for an analog front-end (AFE) of ultrasound medical imaging. This VGA has a closed-loop topology and shows a 37-dB-linear characteristic with a single-stage amplifier. It consists of an op-amp, a non-binary-weighted capacitor array, and a gain-control block. This non-binary-weighted capacitor array reduces the required number of capacitors and the complexity of the gain-control block. The VGA has been fabricated in a 0.35-mm CMOS process. This work gives the largest gain range of 37 dB per stage, the largest P1 dB of 9.5 dBm at the 3.3-V among the recent VGA circuits available in the literature. The voltage gain is controlled in the range of [-10, 27] dB in a linear-in-dB scale with 16 steps by a 4-bit digital code. The VGA has a bandpass characteristic with a passband of [20 kHz, 8 MHz].

• ETRI Journal
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.234-236
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• 2009

We present a novel operational amplifier preset technique for a switched-capacitor circuit to reduce the acquisition time by improving the slewing. The acquisition time of a variable gain amplifier (VGA) using the proposed technique is reduced by 30% compared with a conventional one; therefore, the power consumption of the VGA is decreased. For additional power reduction, a programmable capacitor array scheme is used in the VGA. In the 0.13 ${\mu}m$ CMOS process, the VGA, which consists of three-stages, occupies 0.33 $mm^2$ and dissipates 19.2 mW at 60 MHz with a supply voltage of 1.2 V. The gain range is 36.03 dB, which is controlled by a 10-bit control word with a gain error of ${\pm}0.68$ LSB.

• Proceedings of the IEEK Conference
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• summer
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• pp.218-220
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• 2004

A new wide-band VCO topology using Miller capacitance is proposed. Contrary to conventional VCO using the Miller capacitance where the variable amplifier gain is negative, the proposed VCO uses both the negative and positive variable amplifier gain to enhance the frequency tuning range significantly. The proposed VCO is simulated using HSPICE. The simulations show that 410MHz and 220MHz frequency tuning range are obtained using the negative .and positive variable amplifier gain, respectively. The tuning range of the proposed VCO is $23\%$ of the center frequency(2.8GHz). The phase noise is -104dBc/Hz at 1MHz offset by simple model. The operating current is only 3.84mA at 2.5V power supply.