Kihwa Choi Carnegie Mellon University

A Linearity-Enhanced Wideband Low-Noise Amplifier

To provide seamless, location-independent connectivity, a user requires multiple wireless devices that can support multi-standards or a single device that can be compatible with desired standards over a wide frequency range, while satisfying all required specifications. The single chip solution is preferred due to its compact size and possible re-configurability for multi-standards. The key challenge in the design of the single-chip, multi-standard RF front-end is to achieve high linearity without out-of-band front-end filtering since multiple blockers from different communications co-exist within an operation bandwidth and thus deteriorate linearity due to cross-modulation and intermodulation.

In this talk, a linearity-enhanced wideband low-noise amplifier will be presented with two proposed techniques and its nonlinear behavior will be analyzed by a Volterra series with the newly introduced Volterra coefficients. A 2.56.5-GHz LNA using the proposed topology is designed in a 0.13 um CMOS process and demonstrated with simulated and measured results to confirm the effectiveness of the proposed topology.

Bio:

Kihwa Choi had worked on the circuit-level and system-level designs of Code Division Multiplexing Access (CDMA) base-station from 1995 to 2004 at Samsung Electronics. He started his PhD work in 2004 with Samsung fellowship. Currently, he is a PhD candidate under the guidance of Professor Tamal Mukherjee and Jeyanandh Paramesh in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. His research interests include analog/RF CMOS circuit design, wideband circuit design, linearity enhancement technique, and nonlinear analysis such as Volterra series. He was awarded ADI Outstanding Student Designer Award in 2007.