CMOS LNA with Darlington-pair for UWB systems

Abstract

A 3-5 GHz ultra-wideband CMOS low-noise amplifier fabricated using 0.18 mu m CMOS process is presented. To achieve wideband characteristics, a two-frequency matching method for input matching is proposed. A cutoff-frequency (f(T)) doubler using Darlington-pair is employed to achieve high gain from 2.4 to 5.4 GHz. The LNA achieves an average gain of 21 dB, input return loss less than -10 dB, and a noise figure of 2.85-4.5 dB at a power consumption of 23 mW The input 1 dB gain compression point (P1 dB) and IIP3 are -22 and -14 dBm at 4 GHz, respectively.