Linearization of Techniques for Low

Noise Amplifiers

Prepared By:
Akash I. Mecwan
 Outline

 Basics of Feed Forward Method

 Variants of Feed Forward Method
 Conclusion

 Future Research

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 Limitations of traditional methods

 Normal filtering may not improve nonlinearity due to in band IM3

components.
 Differential configuration can’t cancel IM3 components and are also
not effective to IM2 contribution to IM3 generation.
 Source degeneration reduces the gain, increases NF, introduces IM3
through IM2 components.
 Optimum biasing works well for “Sweet Spot” , which depends on PVT
conditions.
 Current bleeding mainly provides high gain, the contribution to
linearity improvement is not much.
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 Effect of Source Degeneration

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 Typical MOS DC Characteristics

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 Basics of Feed Forward [1]

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 Feed Forward (Cont…) [1]

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 Feed Forward (Cont…) [1]

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 Limitations of Feed Forward

 Accurate, noiseless, and highly linear scaling factors

are feasible.
 The added active components introduce more noise.
 Highly sensitive to mismatch between the main and
auxiliary gain stages.
 Power is doubled or tripled since the auxiliary
amplifier is an exact copy of the main amplifier.
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 Derivative Superposition

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 Limitations of DS

 More noise and poor matching due to

one transistor operates in WI
 Frequency of operation is limited due
to WI transistor
 It worsens the IIP2 of the circuit
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 Complementary DS

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 Conventional vs Complementry DS

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 Limitations of CDS

 It is difficult to match PMOS and

NMOS for accurate distortion
cancellation due to different
characteristics.

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 Learning Outcome

 Linearity analysis for various LNA

topologies is carried out.
 Linearization techniques applicable to
LNA can be applied to Mixers.
 Feed Forward and IM2 injection are new
methods for linearity improvement,
which can provide very high linearity
with moderate gain and little increase in
power requirement.
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 References

 B. Razavi, “RF Microelectronics”, 2nd Edition.

 T. H. Lee, “The Design of CMOS Radio Frequency Circuits”,
2nd Edition.
 B. Razavi, “Fundamentals of Microelectroncis”.
 Arif A. Siddiqi, “Design Methodology and Investigation of
GHz Range CMOS RF Mixers”, M. E. Thesis, Department of
Electronics Carleton University Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
September, 2000.
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 References
IM2 Injection:
 Meysam Asghari and Mohammad Yavari, “A High IIP2 and

IIP3 CMOS Down-Conversion Active Mixer ”, 22nd Iranian

Conference on Electrical Engineering, May, 2014.

 Shuzuo Lou and Howard C. Luong, “A Linearization

Technique for RF Receiver Front-End Using Second-Order-

Intermodulation Injection”, IEEE Journal of Solid-state

Circuits, Vol. 43(11), pp 2404 – 2412, November 2008.

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Suggestions..!