An E-Band 21-dB Variable-Gain Amplifier with 0.5-V Supply in 40-nm CMOS

• DOI: 10.3390/electronics10070804
• Publication Date: 2021-03-29T20:01:57Z
• Authors: Gibeom Shin; Kyunghwan Kim; Kangseop Lee; Hyun-Hak Jeong; Ho-Jin Song
• Keywords: variable-gain amplifier (VGA), E-band; variable-gain; 0202 electrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineering; 02 engineering and technology; E-band; low power consumption; compact layout; 7. Clean energy; variable-gain amplifier (VGA)

This paper presents a variable-gain amplifier (VGA) in the 68–78 GHz range. To reduce DC power consumption, the drain voltage was set to 0.5 V with competitive performance in the gain and the noise figure. High-Q shunt capacitors were employed at the gate terminal of the core transistors to move input matching points for easy matching with a compact transformer. The four stages amplifier fabricated in 40-nm bulk complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) showed a peak gain of 24.5 dB at 71.3 GHz and 3‑dB bandwidth of more than 10 GHz in 68–78 GHz range with approximately 4.8-mW power consumption per stage. Gate-bias control of the second stage in which feedback capacitances were neutralized with cross-coupled capacitors allowed us to vary the gain by around 21 dB in the operating frequency band. The noise figure was estimated to be better than 5.9 dB in the operating frequency band from the full electromagnetic (EM) simulation.