A 17.5dBm IIP3 high linear fully differential RF CMOS amplifier

A high linear fully differential RF CMOS amplifier covering UHF band is presented in this paper. A novel structure with both NMOS and PMOS differential pairs is proposed to cancel IM3 induced by 1
^st
order derivative of transconductance (g
_m
') and 2
^nd
order derivative of transconductance (g
_m
"). With appropriate DC operating points and aspect ratios, the RF CMOS amplifier achieves 12.5dB noise figure (NF), 10.5dB voltage gain and 17.5dBm input third order intercept point (IIP3) with total current consumption of 2mA from 1.8V voltage supply. The proposed amplifier is designed in TSMC 0.18μm CMOS process.