Low-power-consumption and high-gain CMOS distributed amplifiers using cascade of inductively coupled common-source gain cells for UWB systems

A distributed amplifier with new cascade inductively coupled common-source gain-cell configuration is presented. Compared with other existing gain-cell configurations, the proposed cascade common-source gain cell can provide much higher transconductance and, hence, gain. The new distributed amplifier using the proposed gain-cell configuration, fabricated via a TSMC 0.18-mum CMOS process, achieves an average power gain of around 10 dB, input match of less than -20 dB, and noise figure of 3.3-6.1 dB with a power consumption of only 19.6 mW over the entire ultra-wideband (UWB) band of 3.1-10.6 GHz. This is the lowest power consumption ever reported for fabricated CMOS distributed amplifiers operating over the whole UWB band. In the high-gain operating mode that consumes 100 mW, the new CMOS distributed amplifier provides an unprecedented power gain of 16 dB with 3.2-6-dB noise figure over the UWB range