A Fine-Tuned Low-Power LNA for Lower-Band UWB Transceiver

Ultra wideband (UWB) radio emerges as a very promising wireless communication technology due to its many advantages: i.e., 7.5GHz spectrum bandwidth, very high data rate, very low power consumption, etc. This paper presents an optimal low-power 3.1-6GHz low-noise amplifier (LNA) designed for pulse-based lower band UWB transceivers. The LNA uses tunable shunt-series feedback topology architecture to achieve desirable ultra broadband gain, noise performance and to optimize the power composition. The LNA is implemented in a commercial 0.18μm SiGe BiCMOS process and the measured specifications are: an adequate ultra broadband gain of 18.14dB-12.63dB, a low noise figure (NF) of 3.02dB-4.23dB across 3.1-6GHz bandwidth, a very low DC power consumption of less than 15mW at 3V supply, S
ll
of less than -6dB, and S
22
of less than -5dB.