Full band UWB LNA with 8kV+ ESD protection in RFCMOS

This paper reports a single-chip full-band 3.1–10.6GHz ESD UWB LNA featuring cascode shunt-series feedback topology and very robust whole-chip ESD protection. Careful ESD+LNA co-design was excised to achieve full-chip circuit optimization with high ESD protection. This design is implemented in a foundry 0.18µm RFCMOS process. Measurement shows the highest reported ESD protection of 8.25kV, a peak gain of 10.9dB, a good gain flatness of 3.64%/GHz across 3.1–10.6GHz, low input reflection of <−10dB, noise figure of 4.98dB, group delay of 103±35pS and good linearity with P
1-dB
=2.88dBm@7GHz.