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 CHEMICAL ENGINEERING TRANSACTIONS  
 

VOL. 46, 2015 

A publication of 

 
The Italian Association 

of Chemical Engineering 
Online at www.aidic.it/cet 

Guest Editors: Peiyu Ren, Yancang Li, Huiping Song 
Copyright © 2015, AIDIC Servizi S.r.l., 
ISBN 978-88-95608-37-2; ISSN 2283-9216 

Gm-boosted Flat Gain UWB Low Noise Amplifier with Noise 
Cancellation 

Xiaorong Zhao*a, Honghui Fana, Zhongjun Fua, b, Feiyue Yea, Jianfu Chenb 
a 
School of Computer Engineering, Jiangsu University of Technology, Changzhou, Jiangsu, 213001, China 

b 
Nanjing University of Science & Technology, Nanjing, 210094, China 

zhaoxr432698@sina.com 

This paper presents a high power gain (S21) and low Noise Figure (NF) 3.1-10.6 GHz common gate (CG) 
CMOS ultra wideband (UWB) low noise amplifier (LNA) using active gm-boosted technology, T-match input 
network, self-body-bias, current reused and noise cancelling technique. Wideband input impedance matching 
was achieved by using the proposed T-match input network to improve the input matching at low frequencies. 
The proposed UWB LNA employs self-body-bias and current reused technique to decrease the total power 
consumption. The noise cancelling technique and active gm-boosted technology are utilized to restrain the 
noise generated and decrease the NF. The proposed LNA was fabricated using TSMC 0.13 μm RF CMOS 
technology. The simulation results show an average S21 of 22.0795 dB with a ripple of ± 0.4125 dB, reverse 
isolation (S12) was less than -34.15 dB, an excellent NF of 2.232-2.696 dB, input return loss (S11) was less 
than -15.635 dB and output return loss (S22) was less than -16.903 dB in the frequency range of 3.1-10.6 GHz. 
The proposed UWB LNA consumed 3.996 mW from a 1.2 V power supply. 

1.  Introduction 

Since the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) has allocated 7.5 GHz bandwidth for UWB application 
in the unlicensed frequency range of 3.1-10.6 GHz, the related technologies have attracted much attention 
from both industry and academia, which was confirmed (Lin et al (2007)). This technology has become more 
popular for broadband wireless communication research due to the main characteristics of UWB systems 
include low power spectral density, short duration pulses, robustness to multipath fading, and particularly the 
high data-rate short-range communications. 
LNA is the first stage of any communication receiver, so the LNA plays a vital role because the quality of the 
signal that is received and pre-amplified is a critical factor in the overall system performance, which was 
confirmed (Wang et al (2007)). The LNA can be directly added to the first stage in the receive path, it usually 
dominates the NF and bandwidth in the receiver, and it often makes a trade-off among gain, noise and 
bandwidth, which was confirmed (Wang et al (2011)). Since the emergence of the UWB technology, several 
CMOS wideband LNA topologies have been presented in LNA designs, such as Zhang and Kinget (2006) and 
Heydari (2007) reported distributed amplifier, which is usually power hungry and occupy a large area for the 
use of transmission lines, Reiha (2007) reported resistive shunt feedback, which can achieve good input 
matching, high gain and wideband performance. Unfortunately, the performance is degraded when the 
amplifier is operated in the high frequency band, this is due to the effect of parasitic capacitances, which was 
confirmed (Jung et al (2007) and Chen et al (2008)). Chen (2007) reported cascade amplifiers, and Lin et al 
(2007) and Muhammed and Rezaul Hasan (2012) reported current reused amplifiers, which is useful for high 
gain and low power dissipation. However, with the use of a stack of multi-transistors, it increases the required 
supply voltage, which is not suitable for low supply voltage operation. The UWB LNA has several 
requirements, such as sufficient wideband input return loss, output return loss, sufficient flat gain over the 
entire 7.5GHz bandwidth, low noise figure for sensitivity, low power consumption for mobility, and a small chip 
area for low cost. 
In this paper, we present a UWB LNA fabricated in TSMC 0.13 μm RF CMOS technology. The proposed UWB 
LNA adopts the CG topology and utilizes current reused technique to achieve low power consumption, self-
body-bias and current reused technique to decrease the total power consumption, noise cancelling technique 

                               
 
 

 

 
   

                                                  
DOI: 10.3303/CET1546025

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Please cite this article as: Zhao X.R., Fan H.H., Fu Z.J., Ye F.Y., Chen J.F., 2015, Gm-boosted flat gain uwb low noise amplifier with noise 
cancellation, Chemical Engineering Transactions, 46, 145-150  DOI:10.3303/CET1546025  

145



 

and active gm-boosted technology to decrease the NF. Rest of this paper is organized as follows. In Section 
2, the proposed circuit is analyzed and designed. Simulation methods and results reported in Section 3. 
Finally, Section 4 presents the conclusion. 

2.  Circuit analysis and design 

2.1 Input impedance matching network 

Recently, CG LNAs have become more and more popular for UWB systems thanks to their simpler input 
matching network (IMN), better linearity, lower power consumption, and better input output isolation compared 
with CS LNAs, which was confirmed (Liao and Liu (2007)). However, it suffers from channel noise and poor 
gain response because of the restricted value of the transconductance available for input matching. 
Common CG amplifiers set gm to 20 mS for the input device to achieve broadband input matching. When the 
gm1 value is different from 20 mS, the input impedance cannot match the source impedance. Therefore, we try 
to alleviate the restricted gm value by a simple IMN topology as shown in Fig.1a. Its equivalent small signal 
model is shown in Fig. 1b.  
The input impedance looking into the circuit from the source of transistor M1 is derived as follows: 

01

0
1in

1
//]

1
//)//[(

rg

Zr

Cj
RLjjwLZ

m

L

gs

PS +
+

+=
ω

ω
 

(1)

Where, 
.

22

S
S

S
P R

R

L
R +=

ω

 
Where r0 is the channel resistance of M1. While Cgs1 resonates with LS, the input impedance can then be 
approximated as: 

01

0
1in

1
//

1
//

rg

Zr

Cj
RjwLZ

m

L

gs

P +
+

+=
ω

 

(2)

                  

a The Proposed IMN Topology       b The equivalent small signal model of the circuit in Fig. 2a 

Figure 1: CG LNA topology 

It can be observed that Rp adds an additional degree of freedom to the input match design, and alleviates the 
restricted gm1 value for input matching. Eq. (2) illustrate that gm1 is not restricted to 20 mS if resistance Rs is 
adjusted to maintain the desired 50 Ω input matching. Note that there will be a small DC voltage drop across 
Rs that will consume headroom at the output, but the increased flexibility in the input matching design justifies 
the trade-off.  

2.2 Noise analysis and noise cancelling technique 

We can characterize the performance of a particular receiver element by its NF, which is the ratio of actual 
output noise of the element to that which would remain if the element itself did not introduce noise. The total 
NF of a receiver system (a chain of stages) can be calculated using the Friss formula as follows: 

32
1

1 1 2 1 2 1

( 1) ( 1)( 1)
...

−

− −−
= + + + +  


n

n

NF NFNF
NF NF

G G G G G G
 

(3) 

The total system NF equals the sum of the NF of the first stage (NF1) plus that of the second stage (NF2) 
minus 1 divided by the total gain of the previous stage (G1) and so on. This result suggests that the noise 
contributed by each stage decreases as the total gain preceding that stage increases, implying that the first 

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few stages in a cascade are the most critical. It is understandable that the total NF is dominated by the NF1, 
which is the NF of the LNA. 

 

Figure 2: Principle of noise cancelling technique 

Noise canceling technique is an effective technique to reduce the NF to a lower level. Fig. 3 shows the small-
signal schematic of the presented LNA. The purpose of noise cancelling is to decouple the input matching with 
the NF by cancelling the output noise from the matching device. In the presented LNA, a common-gate 
amplifier with a source feedback resistance is used as the input stage to get a good input impedance 
matching. The main noise source of the LNA is the input matching NMOS transistor M1. The noise current 

2
n

i  
of M1 flows into R1 but out from R2, which makes the noise voltages from M1 at node A and B in the opposite 
phases while the signals are in phases. These noise voltages are converted to currents and added together at 
node C. With the noise cancelling technique, the noise current of M1 flowing to the output So the noise effect 
to the output from M1 will be reduced and what’s more this noise will be completely cancelled at some special 
values of R1, R2, gm2, gm3. By properly designing gm2 and gm3, the noise contributed by M1 can be cancelled 
at the output. 

2.3 Proposed UWB LNA circuit 

The CG stage failed to provide enough gain at higher frequency which is the main unacceptable outcome for 
UWB applications. Thus, the design of the CG amplifier adopts a multilevel structure to improve the circuit 
performance. Fig. 3 shows the complete schematic diagram of the 3.1–10.6 GHz CMOS UWB LNA, in which 
the important device parameters are labelled. 
We propose a UWB CG LNA architecture in Fig. 3. The first stage of the UWB LNA configuration consists of 
the CG input stage (M1) and gm-boosted amplifier (M6) for input wideband matching, the CG stage with low 
input impedance characteristic and broadband behavior, provides NF that is almost independent of the 
frequency of operation. The CG stage also eliminates the Miller effect and hence provides better isolation from 
the output return signal. Then the CS second stage (M2) for gain improvement followed by an output buffer 
(M4, M5) used to drive 50 Ω. which adopted a new T-match IMN composed of a series LS-RS, interconnection-
line inductance L1, active gm-boosted technology and Cgs-gm1 of transistor M1 to enhance the matching 
bandwidth of the IMN LNA. An inverting common-source amplifier M6 is introduced between the gate and 
source of M1 to boost its effective transconductance Gm from gm1 to (1+gm6RB1)gm1, which can improve the 
input match, reduce NF and increase the S21. The self-body bias and current reused technique are used to 
reduce power consumption further. In order to compensate for the power gain, a CS amplifier using gain 
peaking techniques is adopted in the second stage. CG is the coupling capacitor, and Cb is the bypass 
capacitor. The proposed amplifier is the current reuse CG-CS LNA with capacitive inter-stage coupling except 
the extra inductor LG, which value is adjusted for the series resonance with the input capacitance of M2 to 
provide a low impedance path. In order to cancelling the noise of CG transistor, we utilizing noise cancelling 
technique to cancel the noise of the first stage. The values of LD and Cb affect gain flatness in the design 
employing the stagger tuning technique. The peaking inductor LD and the parasitic capacitances at the drain 
terminal of M1 and the source terminal of M2 were parallel resonant at the lower corner frequency (3.2GHz), 
while the peaking inductor LC and Cgs5 were series resonant at the upper corner frequency (10.4 GHz). In this 
way, flat power gain, high power gain, flat and low noise factor were achieved. 

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Figure 3: Schematic of the proposed LNA 

3. Simulation results and discussions 

 

Figure 4: Simulated S21 and S12 against frequency characteristics of 3.1-10.6 GHz UWB LNA 

The designed circuit of Fig. 4 is simulated with Agilent Advanced Design System (ADS) tools in TSMC 0.13 
μm RF CMOS technology. Results of S-parameters, noise and stable are shown in Fig. 4 – Fig. 6. The 
simulated S21 and S12 characteristics are shown in Fig. 4. The simulated S21 shows and average power gain 
of 22.0795 dB with the bandwidth from 3.1 to 10.6 GHz, which is relatively high for wideband amplifiers. The 
full band gain ripple is about ± 0.4125 dB. The simulated S12 is less than -34.15 dB in the frequency range of 
3.1-10.6 GHz, which indicating the proposed UWB LNA can have a good stability performance. S12 is below -
34.15 dB due to RF chock inductor (LD) and bypass capacitor (Cb) between transistor M1 and M2 within the 
required bandwidth. The better reverse S12 can reduce the latter local oscillation leakage arising from the 
capacitive paths and the substrate coupling. The value of input return loss (S11) and output return loss (S22) is 
shown in Fig. 5, the value of S11 is below -15.635 dB. S22 is less than -16.903 dB. As shown in Fig. 6, the 
simulated result clearly shows an excellent NF of 2.232-2.696 dB in the frequency range of 3.1-10.6 GHz. The 
minimum NF is 2.232 dB at 10.6 GHz and the maximum NF is 2.696 dB at 5.36 GHz, with an average NF of 
2.464 dB. 
 

 

Figure 5: Simulated S11 and S22 against frequency characteristics of 3.1-10.6 GHz UWB LNA 

148



 

 

Figure 6: Simulated NF against frequency characteristics of 3.1-10.6 GHz UWB LNA 

A comparison of our proposed LNA with other recently published LNAs is presented in Table 1. The FOM is 
also included in the table and defined in Eq. (4), which was confirmed (Muhammed and Rezaul Hasan 
(2013)). 

DPNF

BWS
FOM

*)1|(|

*|| 21
−

=  
(4) 

Where |S21| indicates the average power/voltage gain, BW indicate the bandwidth in GHz, |NF| represents the 
average noise figure and PD represents the power dissipation in milliwatts (mW). The proposed architecture 
achieves considerably high FOM compared to most of the recently published popular designs. 

Table 1: Comparison of the simulated results of the proposed LNA with other recently published. 

 This work Ahmed and 
Carlos(2011) 

Jing et al 
(2014) 

Habid et al 
(2013) 

Shim el 
al (2013) 

Habid et 
al (2015) 

Wan et al 
(2015) 

Technology(μm) 0.13 0.13 0.18 0.13 0.18 0.13 0.18 
BW(GHz) 3.1-10.6 3.1-10.6 3.1-10.6 3.1-10.6 3.1-10.6 3.1-10.6 3.1-10.6 
S21(dB) 22.0795±0

.4125 
16* 20.65* 19.5±1.5 11.3* 10.24# 14.4* 

NF (dB) 2.464±0.0.
232 

3.9* 2.79* 2.45±1.45 4.15* 2.5* 2.6* 

PD(mW) 3.996 10 33 4.1 8.2 17.92 9.0 
FOM(GHz/mW) 28.31 4.14 2.62 24.6 3.28 2.86 7.5 
* Average value 
# Maximum value 

3.  Conclusion 

A high S21 and low NF 3.1-10.6 GHz CG CMOS UWB LNA using active gm-boosted technology, T-match input 
network, self-body-bias, current reused and noise cancelling technique has been developed in TSMC 0.13 μm 
RF CMOS technology. The feasibility of the proposed UWB LNA for achieving high and flat power gain, good 
reverse isolation, good input and output matching, and excellent noise performance in this paper. It has a high 
and relatively flat S21 performance across the entire 7500 MHz bandwidth. The simulated result shows that the 
proposed UWB LNA has high and flat S21 of 21.667 to 22.492 dB, good S11 < -15.635 dB, S12 <-34.15 dB, S22 
< -16.903 dB, and low and flat NF of 2.232 to 2.696 dB over the 3.1-10.6GHz band of interest. At the supply 
voltage of 1.2 V, the amplifier stage draw the current of 3.33 mA resulting in a power consumption of 3.996 
mW, the output buffer stage draws the current of 7.07 mA resulting in a power consumption of 8.484 mW. The 
results of the proposed UWB LNA indicate that is very suitable for 3.1-10.6GHz UWB system applications. 

Acknowledgments 

This work was financially supported by National Natural Science Foundation (No.61302124, No.61472166), 
National Social Science Fund (15BTQ016), Natural Science Foundation of the Higher Education Institutions of 
Jiangsu Province (15KJD510003, 13KJB520006), Scientific Research Foundation of Jiangsu University of 
Technology (No.KYY13030), Natural Science Fund of Changzhou (CJ20140049), and Program of six talent 
tops of Jiangsu Province (DZXX-031). The Key Laboratory of Cloud Computing & Intelligent Information 
Processing of Changzhou City under Grant No.CM20123004. The supports are gratefully acknowledged. 

149



 
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