• Smart Media Journal
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.55-61
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• 2015

A bandwidth-enhanced ultra-wide band (UWB) CMOS balun-LNA is implemented as a part of a software defined radio (SDR) receiver which supports multi-band and multi-standard. The proposed balun-LNA is composed of a single-to-differential converter, a differential-to-single voltage summer with inductive shunt peaking, a negative feedback network, and a differential output buffer with composite common-drain (CD) and common-source (CS) amplifiers. By feeding the single-ended output of the voltage summer to the input of the LNA through a feedback network, a wideband balun-LNA exploiting negative feedback is implemented. By adopting a source follower-based inductive shunt peaking, the proposed balun-LNA achieves a wider gain bandwidth. Two LNA design examples are presented to demonstrate the usefulness of the proposed approach. The LNA I adopts the CS amplifier with a common gate common source (CGCS) balun load as the S-to-D converter for high gain and low noise figure (NF) and the LNA II uses the differential amplifier with the ac-grounded second input terminal as the S-to-D converter for high second-order input-referred intercept point (IIP2). The 3 dB gain bandwidth of the proposed balun-LNA (LNA I) is above 5 GHz and the NF is below 4 dB from 100 MHz to 5 GHz. An average power gain of 18 dB and an IIP3 of -8 ~ -2 dBm are obtained. In simulation, IIP2 of the LNA II is at least 5 dB higher than that of the LNA I with same power consumption.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Electromagnetic Engineering and Science
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• v.24 no.11
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• pp.1055-1063
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• 2013

Low noise amplifiers(LNAs) are an integral component of RF receivers and are frequently required to operate at wide frequency bands for various wireless systems. For wideband operation, important performance metrics such as voltage gain, return loss, noise figures and linearity have been carefully investigated and characterized for the proposed LNA. An inductive shunt feedback configuration is successfully employed in the input stage of the proposed LNA which incorporates cascaded networks with a peaking inductor in the buffer stage. Design equations for obtaining low and high input matching frequencies are easily derived, leading to a relatively simple method for circuit implementation. Careful theoretical analysis explains that poles and zeros are characterized and utilized for realizing the wideband response. Linearity is significantly improved because the inductor between gate and drain decreases the third-order harmonics at the output. Fabricated in $0.18{\mu}m$ CMOS process, the chip area of this LNA is $0.202mm^2$, including pads. Measurement results illustrate that input return loss shows less than -7 dB, voltage gain greater than 8 dB, and a little high noise figure around 7~8 dB over 1.5~13 GHz. In addition, good linearity(IIP3) of 2.5 dBm is achieved at 8 GHz and 14 mA of current is consumed from a 1.8 V supply.

• JSTS:Journal of Semiconductor Technology and Science
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.100-108
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• 2014

Low noise amplifier (LNA) is an integral component of RF receiver and frequently required to operate at wide frequency bands for various wireless system applications. For wideband operation, important performance metrics such as voltage gain, return loss, noise figure and linearity have been carefully investigated and characterized for the proposed LNA. An inductive shunt feedback configuration is successfully employed in the input stage of the proposed LNA which incorporates cascaded networks with a peaking inductor in the buffer stage. Design equations for obtaining low and high impedance-matching frequencies are easily derived, leading to a relatively simple method for circuit implementation. Careful theoretical analysis explains that input impedance can be described in the form of second-order frequency response, where poles and zeros are characterized and utilized for realizing the wideband response. Linearity is significantly improved because the inductor located between the gate and the drain decreases the third-order harmonics at the output. Fabricated in $0.18{\mu}m$ CMOS process, the chip area of this wideband LNA is $0.202mm^2$, including pads. Measurement results illustrate that the input return loss shows less than -7 dB, voltage gain greater than 8 dB, and a little high noise figure around 6-8 dB over 1.5 - 13 GHz. In addition, good linearity (IIP3) of 2.5 dBm is achieved at 8 GHz and 14 mA of current is consumed from a 1.8 V supply.

• JSTS:Journal of Semiconductor Technology and Science
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.443-450
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• 2014

This paper presents a 20-Gb/s optical receiver circuit fabricated with standard 65-nm CMOS technology. Our receiver circuits are designed with consideration for parasitic inductance and capacitance due to bonding wires connecting the photodetector and the circuit realized separately. Such parasitic inductance and capacitance usually disturb the high-speed performance but, with careful circuit design, we achieve optimized wide and flat response. The receiver circuit is composed of a transimpedance amplifier (TIA) with a DC-balancing buffer, a post amplifier (PA), and an output buffer. The TIA is designed in the shunt-feedback configuration with inductive peaking. The PA is composed of a 6-stage differential amplifier having interleaved active feedback. The receiver circuit is mounted on a FR4 PCB and wire-bonded to an equivalent circuit that emulates a photodetector. The measured transimpedance gain and 3-dB bandwidth of our optical receiver circuit is 84 $dB{\Omega}$ and 12 GHz, respectively. 20-Gb/s $2^{31}-1$ electrical pseudo-random bit sequence data are successfully received with the bit-error rate less than $10^{-12}$. The receiver circuit has chip area of $0.5mm{\times}0.44mm$ and it consumes excluding the output buffer 84 mW with 1.2-V supply voltage.