A low noise 3.1-10.6 GHz pMOS distributed amplifier for ultra-wideband applications

A low noise pMOS distributed amplifier for Ultra-wideband (UWB) application is presented in this study. The amplifier is a two-stage design fabricated in a standard 0.18-μm CMOS process. The pMOS-based distributed amplifier as input stage is used to achieve a better noise figure and a wider bandwidth; besides, the nMOS common-source amplifier as output stage is applied to obtain sufficient gain over the band, respectively. The fully amplifier exhibits a power gain of 9 dB with a gain flatness of 0.8 dB, and noise figures are approximately lower than 5.3 dB from 3.1 to 10.6 GHz. The 1-dB compression point and input third-order intercept points are -8 dBm and 3.5 dBm with total power consumption of 22.5 mW, respectively. Experimental results indicate that the proposed architecture exhibits low noise and high gain performance for UWB applications.