A 1.5-V 2–9.6-GHz Inductorless Low-Noise Amplifier in 0.13-μm CMOS

This paper presents an inductorless low-noise amplifier (LNA) design for an ultra-wideband (UWB) receiver front- end. A current-reuse gain-enhanced noise canceling architecture is proposed, and the properties and limitations of the gain- enhancement stage are discussed. Capacitive peaking is employed to improve the gain flatness and-3-dBbandwidth, at the cost of absolute gain value. The LNA circuit is fabricated in a 0.13-μmtriple-well CMOS technology. Measurement result shows that a small-signal gain of 11 dB and a-3-dBbandwidth of 2–9.6 GHz are obtained. Over the-3-dBbandwidth, the input return loss is less than-8.3 dB, and the noise figure is 3.6–4.8 dB. The LNA consumes 19 mW from a low supply voltage of 1.5 V. It is shown that the LNA designed without on-chip inductors achieves comparable performances with inductor-based designs. The silicon area is reduced significantly in the inductorless design, the LNA core occupies only 0.05mm², which is among the smallest reported designs.