A temperature compensated linear output RF amplifier with programmable gain control

This paper presents a linear RF amplifier with a novel temperature compensation technique and programmable gain control fabricated in a 0.13mum CMOS technology. The CMOS amplifier suitable for RF output stages provides robust operation over a wide temperature range from -30degC up to +85degC without using high slope PTAT current biasing. The realized amplifier within the transmit path of a Bluetooth chip performs 6 dBm maximum output power in limiting mode and has a 1 dB compression point of 4 dBm with EVM of 6% rms, which is suitable e.g. for class 1 Bluetooth enhanced and standard data rate. The implemented programmable gain control has coarse 6 dB and fine 1dB gain steps