A 0.6 V, 1.74 mW, 2.9 dB NF Inductorless Wideband LNA in 28-nm CMOS Exploiting Noise Cancellation and Current Reuse

This paper proposes an inductorless wideband common-gate (CG)-common-source (CS) noise-cancelling (NC) low-noise amplifier (LNA) with current reuse (CR) for ultra-low voltage (ULV) application. In the conventional NC LNA with CR, to reuse the DC current of the auxiliary amplifier, three transistors are stacked in a single branch, leading to a reduced voltage headroom. Moreover, additional inductor and capacitors are required, resulting in a large silicon area. In the proposed work, the DC current of the auxiliary amplifier can be reused without using any inductor. Meanwhile, only two transistors are stacked in a single branch, making it suitable for ULV application. Fabricated in 28 nm CMOS, this work exhibits a voltage gain of 20 dB with a 3-dB bandwidth of 0.2 to 2.85 GHz, a minimum NF of 2.9 dB at 1.7 GHz and an IIP3 of -12.3 dBm at 1 GHz. It consumes 1.74 mW from a 0.6 V supply and occupies a very compact die area of 0.0048 mm2.