Reconfigurable LNA with On-Line Fine-Tuning of Linearity and Gain for 5G Industrial Communications Applications

This paper presents a scheme to a reconfigurable two-stage Low-Noise Amplifier (LNA) with adjustable gain and linearity at 22nm FDSOI. The topology comprises a peak detector that senses the output node of the first stage of the LNA and monitors the gain and linearity for various signals fed at the input via an LC Voltage-Controlled Oscillator (LC-VCO), via a Variable-Gain Amplifier (VGA). The approach practically tunes the gain of the first stage which practically reflects on the overall gain for the LNA. The advantage of the method is that the internal node sensing leaves the matching network at the output intact, while the tuning of the LNA must only consider the input matching network. Results demonstrate a nominal gain of 24 dB with a tunability range of 4.5 dB. The linearity range extention is by 4.3 dBm, with the noise figure (NF) kept at 3.4 dB at maximum gain at 28 GHz.