A Wideband CMOS Low-Noise Amplifier Employing Active Inductor

This paper presents a CMOS low-noise amplifier (LNA) operating from 50 MHz to 5.2 GHz for cognitive radios. The proposed wideband LNA ia a two-stage amplifier, where in the first stage, the transconductance of the amplifier is boosted by utilizing both NMOS and PMOS transistors in complementary current-reuse shunt feedback (SFB) structure. By utilizing the active inductor as a load device in a commonsource amplifier in the second stage, the bandwidth is increased. The proposed inductorless LNA is post-layout simulated in TSMC 0.18 m CMOS technology. The LNA achieves a minimum noise figure of 2.9 dB, maximum power gain of 18.1 dB and input return loss less than -11.5 dB, while consumes only 8.2 mA from the 1.8 V supply. The achieved IIP3 is from -3 to 9.2 dBm.

Keywords:

Cognitive radio , low-noise amplifier , active inductor , wideband , complementary.