Design of a CMOS variable gain amplifier

Abstract

In advanced CMOS technologies as device dimensions are decreasing, requirement for lower supply voltages are increasing to make certain device reliability. So, challenges for analog circuit designers are to discover new techniques to design analog circuits that can operate at lower supply voltages with desired performances. Another challenge for designer is to design a circuit with less power consumption while maintaining desired performance. In this thesis, a CMOS variable gain amplifier is designed to target above challenges.

A fully differential, CMOS variable gain amplifier (VGA) has been designed for a 1.2- volt, low-power, 57-dB dynamic range, and high bandwidth. The VGA comprises of a control circuit, variable gain stages with common-mode feedback circuit. The gain of the VGA varies dB-linearly from -32 to 25 dB with respect to the control voltage, VC. Proposed VGA uses common-mode feedback (CMFB) circuit to fix and stabilize the output DC levels at a particular voltage depending on the input common-mode range (ICMR) requirement and output swing of the VGA. The proposed VGA uses capacitive neutralization technique to achieve high bandwidth operation. This VGA draws 1.25 mA current from a 1.2 V supply. The 3-dB bandwidth varies from 110 MHZ (at 25 dB gain) to 3828 MHz (at -32 dB gain). The proposed VGA is simulated for 0.18μm CMOS technology in LT-Spice with BSIM3V3 model.