Design and analysis of a 3.1–10.6GHz UWB low noise amplifier with forward body bias technique

Abstract A low power and high gain 3.1–10.6 GHz UWB low noise amplifier (LNA) is presented in this paper. The first stage of the UWB LNA employs a resistive shunt feedback topology in conjunction with a parallel LC load to achieve wideband input matching and low noise figure simultaneously. By incorporating the modified current reused cascade configuration and forward body bias technique in the second stage, the proposed UWB LNA can operate at reduced supply voltage and power consumption while maintaining high gain and high reverse isolation. Post-layout simulation results show that the UWB LNA has an average power gain S21 of 14.4 dB with gain ripple of ±1.4 dB, a high reverse isolation S12 of −83 to −51 dB, an input return loss S11 and output return loss S22 of respectively −10.6 to −19.2 dB and −12.1 to −16.4 dB. An excellent noise figure of 2.2–3.2 dB is obtained in the required band with a power dissipation of 9.0 mW under a supply voltage of 1.5 V. The input 1 dB compression point and input third-order intercept point are −15.5 dBm and −6.0 dBm, respectively, at 6 GHz. The chip area including testing pads is only 0.65 mm × 0.82 mm.