Publication

Abstract : Scaling of minimum length of the MOSFET has improved its performance but has reduced the breakdown voltage which makes it prone to Electrostatic Discharge (ESD) damage. This work presents a low-power gm-boosted common gate (CG) ultra wideband (UWB) low noise amplifier (LNA) architecture, operating in the 5–7nbsp;GHz range, employing current-reuse technique with LC based Electrostatic Discharge (ESD) protection. Common gate topology supports wide band input matching and noise figure independent of operating frequency. A PMOS common source topology is used as the gm-boosting stage in order to reduce the noise figure and to remove the dependency of noise figure from the bias point. The gm-boosting stage and the amplifier share common bias current to reduce the power consumption of the LNA. A shunt inductor, series capacitor and power clamp are used for protecting the circuit from ESD damage. The ESD circuit is co-designed with the input matching network in order to reduce the area of the layout. The proposed topology has shown significant improvement in gain and noise figure with ESD protection.