A Low-Power High-IP_1dB Low-Noise Amplifier Using Large-Transistor and Class-AB Mode

Abstract

This letter presents a Ku-band high-input 1-dB compression point (IP1dB) and low-power low-noise amplifier (LNA). The large-transistor technique is employed to enhance IP1dB with low noise figure (NF) for first stage. Differential Class-AB topology is adopted to improve the output 1-dB compression point (OP1dB) and lower power consumption for output stage. To validate the proposed approach, we implemented a two-stage common-source (CS) LNA using 65-nm bulk complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS) technology. Experimental results achieved a minimum NF of 1.94 dB and peak gain of 19.98 dB. The measured IP1dB is −7.8 dBm at 13 GHz, the highest among modern CMOS Ku-band LNAs. The LNA operates with a power consumption of 10 mA at a 1-V supply voltage and occupies a compact core size of <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$0.80\times0.26$ </tex-math></inline-formula> mm2.