1.2 V CMOS 1-10 GHz traveling wave amplifiers using coplanar waveguides as on-chip inductors

The feasibility of using standard 0.18 μm CMOS technology for low cost wideband radio frequency integrated circuits (RFIC) at ∼10 GHz is demonstrated. Two different designs of coplanar waveguides (CPW) have been fabricated for loss comparison and the low-loss design has been identified. The measured loss for the 0.5 mm long low-loss design is 0.32 dB at 10 GHz. A monolithically integrated four-stage traveling wave amplifier (TWA) with n-FET cascode gain cells is proposed, with CPW as the on-chip inductive elements, and is being fabricated. Simulated results indicate a 10 dB gain at 1 GHz and unity-gain frequency of 12 GHz. This TWA is also compared with measured results of a previously reported five-stage TWA with single n-FET gain cells. A new design for a distributed oscillator using a TWA is proposed and is currently being fabricated.