This paper presents a Variable Gain Amplifier (VGA) designed in a 0.18 μm CMOS process to operate in an impedance sensing interface. Based on a transconductance-transimpedance (TC-TI) approach with intermediate analog-controlled current steering, it exhibits a gain ranging from 5 dB to 38 dB with a constant bandwidth around 318 kHz, a power consumption of 15.5 μW at a 1.8 V supply and an active area of 0.021 mm2.
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.
Design of Variable Gain Amplifier Circuit Based on Newton Rings Stress
