A 1.2-2.8 GHz tunable low-noise amplifier with 0.8-1.6 dB noise figure

This paper presents a tunable wideband low-noise amplifier (LNA) covering 1.2 to 2.8 GHz and is realized in a 0.25 µm SiGe:C BiCMOS technology. The LNA covers 80% fractional bandwidth in 16 states using a dual-LC tanks input broadband noise matching technique and a switch capacitor output frequency selection network. The measured minimal noise figure (NF) is 0.8 dB at 1.4 and 1.8 GHz, and the average NF is 1.2 (± 0.4) dB from 1.2 to 2.8 GHz. The best gain is 14 dB at 2 GHz and with ±0.5 dB flatness bandwidth covers from 1.4 GHz to 2.6 GHz. The measured input 1-dB compression point and input IP3 are better than –8 dBm and 3.5 dBm, respectively.