A novel design of ultra-broadband, high-gain and high-linearity variable gain distributed amplifier in 0.13m CMOS technology

摘要

A high-gain, high-linearity and ultra-broadband variable gain distributed amplifier (VGDA) based on employing multiple techniques is presented to substantially increase the gain. The complete design is composed of two major parts including a VGDA part followed by a single stage distributed amplifier (SSDA) part. The VGDA part makes it possible to achieve different gain settings. For high gain considerations, the SSDA part cascades with the VGDA part that takes the benefits of the multiplicative gain mechanism. A theory is presented to enhance the linearity without imposing further DC power consumption. This idea has been validated by simulation results as expected. The design is analysed and simulated in the standard 0.13m CMOS technology. It presents the large gain tuning range of 35dB, from -5dB attenuation gain up to +30dB maximum amplification gain, in relation to the control voltage (V-ctr) that varies between 0.42 and 1.1V. At the maximum amplification gain setting, it presents a DC up to 16GHz 3dB bandwidth, an average noise figure of 3.2dB and an IIP3 of -2dBm. Furthermore, it dissipates 46.42mW from 0.7 and 0.9V power supplies of the drain lines of VGDA and SSDA parts, respectively. Additionally, the Monte Carlo (MC) simulation has been performed to predict an estimate of the accuracy of performance of the proposed design under various conditions.