Wideband Inductorless Low-Noise Amplifier Using Three Feedback Paths

This paper presents the design of a wideband inductorless low noise amplifier (LNA) in 0.18 m CMOS technology for multiband wireless communication standards. The LNA is a fully differential common-gate structure. It uses three feedback paths, for choosing arbitrary value of LNA transconductance which leads to a LNA with higher gain and lower noise figure (NF) over the previously reported amplifiers. Post-layout simulation results show a gain of 20.4 dB with a 3-dB bandwidth of 2.84GHZ, with a 2.62dB NF while dissipating 2.97mW. The IIP3 is -1.67dB

Wideband CMOS low noise amplifiers

Modern fully integrated receiver architectures, require inductorless circuits to achieve their potential low area, low cost, and low power. The low noise amplifier (LNA), which is a key block in such receivers, is investigated in this thesis. LNAs can be either narrowband or wideband. Narrowband LNAs use inductors and have very low noise figure, but they occupy a large area and require a technology with RF options to obtain inductors with high Q. Recently, wideband LNAs with noise and distortion cancelling, with passive loads have been proposed, which can have low NF, but have high power consumption. In this thesis the main goal is to obtain a very low area, low power, and low-cost wideband LNA. First, it is investigated a balun LNA with noise and distortion cancelling with active loads to boost the gain and reduce the noise figure (NF). The circuit is based on a conventional balun LNA with noise and distortion cancellation, using the combination of a common-gate (CG) stage and common-source (CS) stage. Simulation and measurements results, with a 130 nm CMOS technology, show that the gain is enhanced by about 3 dB and the NF is reduced by at least 0.5 dB, with a negligible impact on the circuit linearity (IIP3 is about 0 dBm). The total power dissipation is only 4.8 mW, and the active area is less than 50 x 50 m2 . It is also investigated a balun LNA in which the gain is boosted by using a double feedback structure.We propose to replace the load resistors by active loads, which can be used to implement local feedback loops (in the CG and CS stages). This will boost the gain and reduce the noise figure (NF). Simulation results, with the same 130 nm CMOS technology as above, show that the gain is 24 dB and NF is less than 2.7 dB. The total power dissipation is only 5.4 mW (since no extra blocks are required), leading to a figure-of-merit (FoM) of 3.8 mW1, using 1.2 V supply. The two LNA approaches proposed in this thesis are validated by simulation and by measurement results, and are included in a receiver front-end for biomedical applications (ISM and WMTS), as an example; however, they have a wider range of applications

A MOSFET-only wideband LNA exploiting thermal noise canceling and gain optimization

Dissertação apresentada na Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia da Universidade Nova de Lisboa para a obtenção do grau de Mestre em Engenharia Electrotécnica e de ComputadoresIn this thesis a MOSFET-only implementation of a balun LNA is presended. This LNA is based on the combination of a common-gate and a common-source stage with canceling of the noise of the common-gate stage. In this circuit, resistors are replaced by transistors, to reduce area and cost, and minimize the e ect of process and supply variations and mismatches. In addition we obtain a higher gain for the same voltage drop. Thus, the LNA gain is optimized, and the noise gure(NF) is reduced. We derive equations for the gain, input matching, and NF. The performance of this new topology is compared with that of a conventional LNA with resistors. Simulation results with a 130 nm CMOS technology show that we obtain a balun LNA with a peak 20.2 dB gain (about 2 dB improvement), and a spot NF lower than 2.4 dB. The total power consumption is only 4.8 mW for a bandwidth wide than 5 GHz

Mixed Linearity Improvement Techniques for Ultra-wideband Low Noise Amplifier

We present the linearization of an ultra-wideband low noise amplifier (UWB-LNA) operating from 2GHz to 11GHz through combining two linearization methods. The used linearization techniques are the combination of post-distortion cancellation and derivative-superposition linearization methods. The linearized UWB-LNA shows an improved linearity (IIP3) of +12dBm, a minimum noise figure (NFmin.) of 3.6dB, input and output insertion losses (S11 and S22)  below -9dB over the entire working bandwidth, midband gain of 6dB at 5.8GHz, and overall circuit power consumption of 24mW supplied from a 1.5V voltage source. Both UWB-LNA and linearized UWB-LNA designs are verified and simulated with ADS2016.01 software using BSIM3v3 TSMC 180nm CMOS model files. In addition, the linearized UWB-LNA performance is compared with other recent state-of-the-art LNAs

Inductorless LNA and Harmonic-rejection Mixer for Wideband Direct-conversion Receiver

In this master thesis, combinations of noise-canceling LNA and harmonic-rejection mixers are investigated and compared to find an optimal inductorless receiver front-end for low-band (600-960MHz) FDD LTE-A network. The work was carried out in a modem development project at Ericsson Modems, Lund. Three receiver versions with different harmonic rejection techniques are compared in terms of noise figure (NF) and power consumption and the receiver with 6 LO phases is selected for optimization. The LNA combines noise cancellation for matching stage and nonlinearity cancellation for output stages so both low noise figure and high linearity are achieved. The final circuit show great potential for FDD LTE-A system with support up to 3 aggregated carriers for higher bandwidth. Low NF at 1.62 dB after the LNA and 1.75 dB after the mixer are observed from 0.4-1GHz. The LNA IIP2 is above 12 dBm and robust with process and temperature. Gain switching with possible reduction of 6 and 12 dB is integrated and the LNA linearity is not significantly suffered by low gain. Input return loss (S11) is better than -12dB regardless of gain, number of carriers and temperature (-30 – 110°C). Inductorless operation saves a lot of chip area and avoid dead package area, which then save cost and make the solution competitive.This master’s thesis done at Ericsson Modem aimed to investigate an inductorless receiver front-end for low-band LTE-A user terminals. The circuit combined noise-canceling technique and push-pull stage for LNA and harmonic-rejection technique for mixer, so three main issues of inductorless operation are solved. The issues include LNA noise and linearity, and noise folding effect caused by 3rd harmonics of LO signals

Linearity and Noise Improvement Techniques Employing Low Power in Analog and RF Circuits and Systems

The implementation of highly integrated multi-bands and multi-standards reconfigurable radio transceivers is one of the great challenges in the area of integrated circuit technology today. In addition the rapid market growth and high quality demands that require cheaper and smaller solutions, the technical requirements for the transceiver function of a typical wireless device are considerably multi-dimensional. The major key performance metrics facing RFIC designers are power dissipation, speed, noise, linearity, gain, and efficiency. Beside the difficulty of the circuit design due to the trade-offs and correlations that exist between these parameters, the situation becomes more and more challenging when dealing with multi-standard radio systems on a single chip and applications with different requirements on the radio software and hardware aiming at highly flexible dynamic spectrum access. In this dissertation, different solutions are proposed to improve the linearity, reduce the noise and power consumption in analog and RF circuits and systems. A system level design digital approach is proposed to compensate the harmonic distortion components produced by transmitter circuits’ nonlinearities. The approach relies on polyphase multipath scheme uses digital baseband phase rotation pre-distortion aiming at increasing harmonic cancellation and power consumption reduction over other reported techniques. New low power design techniques to enhance the noise and linearity of the receiver front-end LNA are also presented. The two proposed LNAs are fully differential and have a common-gate capacitive cross-coupled topology. The proposed LNAs avoids the use of bulky inductors that leads to area and cost saving. Prototypes are implemented in IBM 90 nm CMOS technology for the two LNAs. The first LNA covers the frequency range of 100 MHz to 1.77 GHz consuming 2.8 mW from a 2 V supply. Measurements show a gain of 23 dB with a 3-dB bandwidth of 1.76 GHz. The minimum NF is 1.85 dB while the input return loss is greater than 10 dB across the entire band. The second LNA covers the frequency range of 100 MHz to 1.6 GHz. A 6 dBm third-order input intercept point, IIP3, is measured at the maximum gain frequency. The core consumes low power of 1.55 mW using a 1.8 V supply. The measured voltage gain is 15.5 dB with a 3-dB bandwidth of 1.6 GHz. The LNA has a minimum NF of 3 dB across the whole band while achieving an input return loss greater than 12 dB. Finally, A CMOS single supply operational transconductance amplifier (OTA) is reported. It has high power supply rejection capabilities over the entire gain bandwidth (GBW). The OTA is fabricated on the AMI 0.5 um CMOS process. Measurements show power supply rejection ratio (PSRR) of 120 dB till 10 KHz. At 10 MHz, PSRR is 40 dB. The high performance PSRR is achieved using a high impedance current source and two noise reduction techniques. The OTA offers a very low current consumption of 25 uA from a 3.3 V supply

A 0.1–5.0 GHz flexible SDR receiver with digitally assisted calibration in 65 nm CMOS

© 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A 0.1–5.0 GHz flexible software-defined radio (SDR) receiver with digitally assisted calibration is presented, employing a zero-IF/low-IF reconfigurable architecture for both wideband and narrowband applications. The receiver composes of a main-path based on a current-mode mixer for low noise, a high linearity sub-path based on a voltage-mode passive mixer for out-of-band rejection, and a harmonic rejection (HR) path with vector gain calibration. A dual feedback LNA with “8” shape nested inductor structure, a cascode inverter-based TCA with miller feedback compensation, and a class-AB full differential Op-Amp with Miller feed-forward compensation and QFG technique are proposed. Digitally assisted calibration methods for HR, IIP2 and image rejection (IR) are presented to maintain high performance over PVT variations. The presented receiver is implemented in 65 nm CMOS with 5.4 mm2 core area, consuming 9.6–47.4 mA current under 1.2 V supply. The receiver main path is measured with +5 dB m/+5dBm IB-IIP3/OB-IIP3 and +61dBm IIP2. The sub-path achieves +10 dB m/+18dBm IB-IIP3/OB-IIP3 and +62dBm IIP2, as well as 10 dB RF filtering rejection at 10 MHz offset. The HR-path reaches +13 dB m/+14dBm IB-IIP3/OB-IIP3 and 62/66 dB 3rd/5th-order harmonic rejection with 30–40 dB improvement by the calibration. The measured sensitivity satisfies the requirements of DVB-H, LTE, 802.11 g, and ZigBee.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio

Design of broadband inductor-less RF front-ends with high dynamic range for G.hn

System-on-Chip (SoC) was adopted in recent years as one of the solutions to reduce the cost of integrated systems. When the SoC solution started to be used, the final product was actually more expensive due to lower yield. The developments in integrated technology through the years allowed the integration of more components in lesser area with a better yield. Thus, SoCs became a widely used solution to reduced the cost of the final product, integrating into a single-chip the main parts of a system: analog, digital and memory. As integrated technology kept scaling down to allow a higher density of transistors and thus providing more functionality with the same die area, the analog RF parts of the SoC became a bottleneck to cost reduction as inductors occupy a large die area and do not scale down with technology. Hence, the trend moves toward the research and design of inductor-less SoCs that further reduce the cost of the final solution. Also, as the demand for home networking high-data-rates communication systems has increased over the last decade, several standards have been developed to satisfy the requirements of each application, the most popular being wireless local area networks (WLANs) based on the IEEE 802.11 standard. However, poor signal propagation across walls make WLANs unsuitable for high-speed applications such as high-definition in-home video streaming, leading to the development of wired technologies using the existing in-home infrastructure. The ITU-T G.hn recommendation (G.9960 and G.9961) unifies the most widely used wired infrastructures at home (coaxial cables, phone lines and power lines) into a single standard for high-speed data transmission of up to 1 Gb/s. The G.hn recommendation defines a unified networking over power lines, phone lines and coaxial cables with different plans for baseband and RF. The RF-coax bandplan, where this thesis is focused, uses 50 MHz and 100 MHz bandwidth channels with 256 and 512 carriers respectively. The center frequency can range from 350 MHz to 2450 MHz. The recommendation specifies a transmission power limit of 5 dBm for the 50 MHz bandplan and 8~dBm for the 100 MHz bandplan, therefore the maximum transmitted power in each carrier is the same for both bandplans. Due to the nature of an in-home wired environment, receivers that can handle both very large and very small amplitude signals are required; when transmitter and receiver are connected on the same electric outlet there is no channel attenuation and the signal-to-noise-plus-distortion ratio (SNDR) is dominated by the receiver linearity, whereas when transmitter and receiver are several rooms apart channel attenuation is high and the SNDR is dominated by the receiver noise figure. The high dynamic range specifications for these receivers require the use of configurable-gain topologies that can provide both high-linearity and low-noise for different configurations. Thus, this thesis has been aimed at researching high dynamic range broadband inductor-less topologies to be used as the RF front-end for a G.hn receiver complying with the provided specifications. A large part of the thesis has been focused on the design of the input amplifier of the front-end, which is the most critical stage as the noise figure and linearity of the input amplifier define the achievable overall specifications of the whole front-end. Three prototypes has been manufactured using a 65 nm CMOS process: two input RFPGAs and one front-end using the second RFPGA prototype.El "sistema en un chip" (SoC) fue adoptado recientemente como una de las soluciones para reducir el coste de sistemas integrados. Cuando se empezó a utilizar la solución SoC, el producto final era más caro debido al bajo rendimiento de producción. Los avances en tecnología integrada a lo largo de los años han permitido la integración de más componentes en menos área con mejoras en rendimiento. Por lo tanto, SoCs pasó a ser una solución ampliamente utilizada para reducir el coste del producto final, integrando en un único chip las principales partes de un sistema: analógica, digital y memoria. A medida que las tecnologías integradas se reducían en tamaño para permitir una mayor densisdad de transistores y proveer mayor funcionalidad con la misma área, las partes RF analógicas del SoC pasaron a ser la limitación en la reducción de costes ya que los inductores ocupan mucha área y no escalan con la tecnología. Por lo tanto, las tendencias en investigación se mueven hacia el diseño de SoCs sin inductores que todavía reducen más el coste final del producto. También, a medida que la demanda en sistemas de comunicación domésticos de alta velocidad ha crecido a lo largo de la última década, se han desarrollado varios estándares para satisfacer los requisitos de cada aplicación, siendo las redes sin hilos (WLANs) basadas en el estándar IEEE 802.11 las más populares. Sin embargo, una pobre propagación de señal a través de las paredes hacen que las WLANs sean inadecuadas para aplicaciones de alta-velocidad como transmisión de vídeo de alta definición en tiempo real, resultando en el desarrollo de tecnologías con hilos utilizando la infraestructura existente en los domicilios. La recomendación ITU-T G.hn (G.9960 and G.9961) unifica las principales infraestructuras con hilos domésticas (cables coaxiales, línias de teléfono y línias de electricidad) en un sólo estándar para la transmisión de datos hasta 1 Gb/s. La recomendación G.hn define una red unificada sobre línias de electricidad, de teléfono y coaxiales con diferentes esquemas para banda base y RF. El esquema RF-coax en el cual se basa esta tesis, usa canales con un ancho de banda de 50 MHz y 100 MHz con 256 y 512 portadoras respectivamente. La frecuencia centra puede variar desde 350 MHz hasta 2450 MHz. La recomendación especifica un límite en la potencia de transmisión de 5 dBm para el esquema de 50 MHz y 8 dBm para el esquema de 100 MHz, de tal forma que la potencia máxima por portadora es la misma en ambos esquemas. Debido a la estructura de un entorno doméstico con hilos, los receptores deben ser capaces de procesar señales con amplitud muy grande o muy pequeña; cuando transmisor y receptor están conectados en la misma toma eléctrica no hay atenuación de canal y el ratio de señal a rudio más distorsión (SNDR) está dominado por la linealidad del receptor, mientras que cuando transmisor y receptor están separados por varias habitaciones la atenuación es elevada y el SNDR está dominado por la figura de ruido del receptor. Los elevados requisitos de rango dinámico para este tipo de receptores requieren el uso de topologías de ganancia configurable que pueden proporcionar tanto alta linealidad como bajo ruido para diferentes configuraciones. Por lo tanto, esta tesis está encarada a la investigación de topologías sin inductores de banda ancha y elevado rango dinámico para ser usadas a la entrada de un receptor G.hn cumpliendo con las especificaciones proporcionadas. Una gran parte de la tesis se ha centrado en el diseño del amplificador de entrada al ser la etapa más crítica, ya que la figura de ruido y linealidad del amplificador de entrada definen lás máximas especificaciones que el sistema puede conseguir. Se han fabricado 3 prototipos con un proceso CMOS de 65 nm: 2 amplificadores y un sistema completo con amplificador y mezclador.Postprint (published version

Design of a low-voltage CMOS RF receiver for energy harvesting sensor node

In this thesis a CMOS low-power and low-voltage RF receiver front-end is presented. The main objective is to design this RF receiver so that it can be powered by a piezoelectric energy harvesting power source, included in a Wireless Sensor Node application. For this type of applications the major requirements are: the low-power and low-voltage operation, the reduced area and cost and the simplicity of the architecture. The system key blocks are the LNA and the mixer, which are studied and optimized with greater detail, achieving a good linearity, a wideband operation and a reduced introduction of noise. A wideband balun LNA with noise and distortion cancelling is designed to work at a 0.6 V supply voltage, in conjunction with a double-balanced passive mixer and subsequent TIA block. The passive mixer operates in current mode, allowing a minimal introduction of voltage noise and a good linearity. The receiver analog front-end has a total voltage conversion gain of 31.5 dB, a 0.1 - 4.3 GHz bandwidth, an IIP3 value of -1.35 dBm, and a noise figure lower than 9 dB. The total power consumption is 1.9 mW and the die area is 305x134.5 m2, using a standard 130 nm CMOS technology