Design Method of a Single‐ended GM Boosted Common‐gate CMOS Low‐noise Amplifier

ABSTRACTA design method for a common‐gate (CG) low‐noise amplifier (LNA) for LTE applications is presented to have a boosted transconductance (gm) value in a single‐ended configuration. To overcome the constraint of the gm value for conventional CG LNAs for input matching, a notch filter is utilized at the singled‐ended LNA output load. With this topology, the effective gm can be freely increased for a high gain and low noise figure (NF) without affecting input impedance matching. Moreover, the linearity is also enhanced because the notch filter load can reduce high‐order harmonics of the operating frequency. A single‐ended LNA implemented in a 0.18‐μm CMOS process with this technique delivers a maximum voltage gain of 20.9 dB with a minimum NF of 2.6 dB, a third‐order intermodulation intercept point of −9 dBm with power consumption of 5.8 mW at 2.6 GHz. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 56:1409–1412, 2014