6.8 mW 15 dBm IIP3 CMOS common-gate LNA employing post-linearisation technique

A linearised differential common-gate CMOS low-noise amplifier (LNA) is proposed. The linearity is improved by a cross-coupled post-distortion technique, employing PMOS in a weak inversion region as an auxiliary field effect transistor to cancel the third-order nonlinear currents of a common-gate LNA and impair the related second-order nonlinear currents. Meanwhile, the resulting noise figure is little affected. The LNA implemented in a 0.18 μm CMOS technology demonstrates that IIP3 and gain have about 8.2 and 1.5 dB improvements in the designed frequency band, respectively. A NF of 3.4 dB is obtained with a power dissipation of 6.8 mW under a 1.8 V power supply.