Design of an ESD-Protected Ultra-Wideband LNA in Nanoscale CMOS for Full-Band Mobile TV Tuners

This paper presents an electrostatic discharge (ESD)-protected ultra-wideband (UWB) low-noise amplifier (LNA) for full-band (170-to-1700 MHz) mobile TV tuners. It features a PMOS-based open-source input structure to optimize the I/O swings under a mixed-voltage ESD protection while offering an inductorless broadband input impedance match. The amplification core exploiting double current reuse and single-stage thermal-noise cancellation enhances the gain and noise performances with high power efficiency. Optimized in a 90-nm 1.2/2.5-V CMOS process with practical issues taken into account, the LNA using a constant-g_m bias circuit achieves competitive and robust performances over process, voltage and temperature variation. The simulated voltage gain is 20.6 dB, noise figure is 2.4 to 2.7 dB, and IIP3 is +10.8 dBm . The power consumption is 9.6 mW at 1.2 V. |S₁₁| < -10 dB is achieved up to 1.9 GHz without needing any external resonant network. Human Body Model ESD zapping tests of plusmn4 kV at the input pins cause no failure of any device.