A novel reconfigurable variable gain amplifier for a multi-mode multi-band receiver

This paper presents a novel approach for designing a reconfigurable variable gain amplifier（VGA） for the multi-mode multi-band receiver system RF front-end applications.The configuration,which is comprised of gain circuits,control circuit,DC offset cancellation circuit and mode switch circuit is proposed to save die area and power consumption with the function of multi-mode and multi-band through reusing.The VGA is realized in 0.18μm CMOS technology with 1.8 V power supply voltage providing a gain tuning range from 5 to 87 dB when the control voltage varies from 0 to 1.8 V.The 3 dB bandwidth is about 80 MHz for all levels of control voltage（all gains）.Also,the DC offset cancellation circuit can effectively suppress DC offset to a value of less than 40 mV at the output regardless of the input.The overall power consumption is less than 3 mA,and die area is 705×100μm^2.

A signal-summing programmable gain amplifier employing binary-weighted switching and constant-g--_m bias

A novel programmable gain amplifier（ PGA） based on a signal-summing topology is proposed. Different from conventional signal-summing variable gain amplifiers（ VGA）,a binary-weighted switching technique is employed to vary the current-steering transistors＇ aspect ratio to change their transconductance, and hence, an accurate gain step size of 6dB is achieved. The constant-g_m biasing technique and the matching of the transistors and resistors ensures that the gain of the proposed topology is independent of the variation of process, voltage and temperature（ PVT）. P-well NMOS（ Nmetal oxide semiconductor） transistors are utilized to eliminate the influence of back-gate effect which will induce gain error.The source-degeneration technique ensures good linearity performance at a low gain. The proposed PGA is fabricated in a0.18 μm CMOS（ complementary metal oxide semiconductor）process. The measurement results show a variable gain ranging from 0 to24 dB with a step size of 6 dB and a maximum gain error of 0. 3dB. A constant 3dB bandwidth of 210 MHz is achieved at different gain settings. The measured output 3rd intercept point（OIP3） and minimum noise figure（ NF） are20. 9 dBm and 11.1 dB, respectively. The whole PGA has a compact layout of 0.068 mm^2. The total power consumption is4. 8 mW under a 1. 8 V supply voltage.

CMOS Automatic Gain Control Circuit with DC Offset Cancellation for FM/cw Ladar

This paper presented an automatic gain control （AGC） circuit suitable for FM/cw ladar. The proposed architecture was based on two-stage variable gain amplifier （VGA） chain with a novel DC offset canceller circuit, which contained an improved Gilbert cell and a Gm-C feedback loop. To keep the VGA with a linearity in dB characteristic, an improved exponential gain control circuit was introduced. The AGC was implemented in 0.18 gm standard CMOS process. Simulation and measurement results verified that its gain ranged from -20 dB to 30 dB, and band- width ranged from 100 kHz to 10 MHz. Its power consumption was 19.8 mW under a voltage supply of 3.3 V.

A Low-Voltage,Low-Power CMOS High Dynamic Range dB-Linear VGA for Super Heterodyne Receivers

This paper presents a low-voltage low-power variable gain amplifier,which is applied in the automatic gain control loop of a super heterodyne receiver. Six stages are cascaded to provide an 81dB digitally controlled gain range in a 3dB step. The gain step error is less than 0.5dB. It operates at an intermediate frequency of 300kHz, and the power consumption is 1.35mW from a 1.8V supply. The prototype chip is implemented in a TSMC＇s 0.18μm 1P6M CMOS process and occupies approximately 0.24mm^2 . It is very suitable for portable wire- less communication systems. The measurement results agree well with the system requirements.

A 3.8 GHz programmable gain amplifier with a 0.1 dB gain step

A broadband programmable gain amplifier（PGA） with a small gain step and low gain error has been designed in 0.13 m CMOS technology. The PGA was implemented with open-loop architecture to provide wide bandwidth. A two-stage gain control method, which consists of a resistor ladder attenuator and an active fine gain control stage, provides the small gain step. A look-up table based gain control method is introduced in the fine gain control stage to lower the gain error.The proposedPGAshows a decibel-linear variable gainfrom4 to20 dB with a gain step of 0.1 dB and a gain error less than˙0.05 dB. The 3-dB bandwidth and maximum IIP3 are 3.8 GHz and 17 dBm, respectively.

A differential automatic gain control circuit with two-stage -10 to 50 dB tuning range VGAs

A differential automatic gain control （AGC） circuit is presented. The AGC architecture contains twostage variable gain amplifiers （VGAs） which are implemented with a Gilbert cell, a peak detector （PD）, a low pass filter, an operational amplifier, and two voltage to current （V-I） convertors. One stage VGA achieves 30 dB gain due to the use of active load. The AGC circuit is implemented in UMC 0.18-um single-poly six-metal CMOS process technology. Measurement results show that the final differential output swing of the 2nd stage VGA is about 0.9-Vpp; the total gain of the two VGAs can be varied linearly from -10 to 50 dB when the control voltage varies from 0.3 to 0.9 V. The final circuit （containing output buffers and a band-gap reference） consumes 37 mA from single 1.8 V voltage supply. For a 50 mV amplitude 60% modulation depth input AM signal it needs 100 us to stabilize the output. The frequency response of the circuit has almost a constant -3 dB bandwidth of 2.2 MHz. Its OIP3 result is at 19 dBm.

A 60-dB linear VGA with novel exponential gain approximation

A CMOS variable gain amplifier（VGA） that adopts a novel exponential gain approximation is presented.No additional exponential gain control circuit is required in the proposed VGA used in a direct conversion receiver.A wide gain control voltage from 0.4 to 1.8 V and a high linearity performance are achieved.The three-stage VGA with automatic gain control（AGC） and DC offset cancellation（DCOC） is fabricated in a 0.18-μm CMOS technology and shows a linear gain range of more than 58-dB with a linearity error less than ±1 dB.The 3-dB bandwidth is over 8 MHz at all gain settings.The measured input-referred third intercept point（IIP3） of the proposed VGA varies from-18.1 to 13.5 dBm,and the measured noise figure varies from 27 to 65 dB at a frequency of 1 MHz.The dynamic range of the closed-loop AGC exceeds 56 dB,where the output signal-to-noise-and-distortion ratio（SNDR） reaches 20 dB.The whole circuit,occupying 0.3 mm^2 of chip area,dissipates less than 3.7 mA from a 1.8-V supply.

A low power automatic gain control loop for a receiver

This paper proposes a new structure to lower the power consumption of a variable gain amplifier（VGA） and keep the linearity of the VGA unchanged.The structure is used in a high rate amplitude-shift keying（ASK） based IF-stage.It includes an automatic gain control（AGC） loop and ASK demodulator.The AGC mainly consists of sixstage VGAs.The IF-stage is realized in 0.18μm CMOS technology.The measurement results show that the power consumption of the whole system is very low.The system consumes 730μA while operating at 1.8 V.The minimum ASK signal the system could detect is 0.7 mV（peak to peak amplitude）.

A 5 Gb/s CMOS adaptive equalizer for serial link

A 5 Gb/s adaptive equalizer with a new adaptation scheme is presented here by using 0.13μm CMOS process. The circuit consists of the combination of equalizer amplifier, limiter amplifier and adaptation loop. The adaptive algorithm exploits both the low frequency gain loop and the equalizer loop to minimize the inter-symbol interference （ISI） for a variety of cable characteristics. In addition, an offset cancellation loop is used to alleviate the offset influence of the signal path. The adaptive equalizer core occupies an area of 0.3567 mm2 and consumes a power consumption of 81.7 mW with 1.8 V power supply. Experiment results demonstrate that the equalizer could compensate for a designed cable loss with 0.23 UI peak-to-peak jitter.

A 6-7 GHz,40 dB receiver RF front-end with 4.5 dB minimum noise figure in 0.13μm CMOS for IR-UWB applications

A wideband receiver RP front-end for IR-UWB applications is implemented in 0.13μm CMOS technology. Thanks to the direct sub-sampling architecture,there is no mixing process.Both LNA and VGA work at RF frequencies.To optimize noise as well as linearity,a differential common-source LNA with capacitive cross- coupling is used,which only consumes current of 1.8 mA from a 1.2 V power supply.Following LNA,a two-stage current-steering VGA is adopted for gain tuning.To extend the overall bandwidth,a three-stage staggered peaking technique is used.Measurement results show that the proposed receiver front-end achieves a gain tuning range from 5 to 40 dB within 6-7 GHz,a minimum noise figure of 4.5 dB and a largest IIP_3 of-11 dBm.The core receiver (without test buffer) consumes 14 mW from a 1.2 V power supply and occupies 0.58 mm^2 area.

A high-performance low-power CMOS AGC for GPS application

A wide tuning range,low power CMOS automatic gain control（AGC） with a simple architecture is proposed. The proposed AGC is composed of a variable gain amplifier（VGA）,a comparator and a charge pump,and the dB-linear gain is controlled by the charge pump.The AGC was implemented in a 0.18μm CMOS technology.The dynamic range of the VGA is more than 55 dB,the bandwidth is 30 MHz,and the gain error is lower than±1.5 dB over the full temperature and gain ranges.It is designed for GPS application and is fed from a single 1.8 V power supply. The AGC power consumption is less than 5 mW,and the area of the AGC is 700×450μm^2.

A 14-bit 40-MHz analog front end for CCD application

A 14-bit,40-MHz analog front end（AFE） for CCD scanners is analyzed and designed.The proposed system incorporates a digitally controlled wideband variable gain amplifier（VGA） with nearly 42 dB gain range,a correlated double sampler（CDS） with programmable gain functionality,a 14-bit analog-to-digital converter and a programmable timing core.To achieve the maximum dynamic range,the VGA proposed here can linearly amplify the input signal in a gain range from-1.08 to 41.06 dB in 6.02 dB step with a constant bandwidth.A novel CDS takes image information out of noise,and further amplifies the signal accurately in a gain range from 0 to 18 dB in0.035 dB step.A 14-bit ADC is adopted to quantify the analog signal with optimization in power and linearity.An internal timing core can provide flexible timing for CCD arrays,CDS and ADC.The proposed AFE was fabricated in SMIC 0.18 μm CMOS process.The whole circuit occupied an active area of 2.8×4.8 mm^2 and consumed360 mW.When the frequency of input signal is 6.069 MHz,and the sampling frequency is 40 MHz,the signal to noise and distortion（SNDR） is 70.3 dB,the effective number of bits is 11.39 bit.