A Synthesis Tool for CMOS RF Low-Noise Amplifiers

• Published in: IEEE transactions on computer-aided design of integrated circuits and systems Vol. 27; no. 5; pp. 977 - 982
• Main Authors: Tulunay, G., Balkir, S.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York IEEE 01-05-2008; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Amplifiers; Circuit simulation; Circuit synthesis; CMOS; CMOS technology; Computational modeling; Design engineering; Integrated circuit synthesis; Low-noise amplifier (LNA); Low-noise amplifiers; Mathematical models; noise figure (NF); Radio frequencies; Radio frequency; radio frequency (RF) circuit synthesis; Radiofrequency amplifiers; Radiofrequency integrated circuits; Semiconductor device modeling; simulated annealing (SA); Simulators; Synthesis; Volterra series
• ISSN: 0278-0070; 1937-4151
• DOI: 10.1109/TCAD.2008.917579

A stand-alone design automation tool tailored for radio frequency (RF) complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) low-noise amplifier (LNA) designs is presented. Rather than relying on commercially available circuit simulators such as Spectre or Hspice, the presented synthesis tool is self-contained with its own built-in modules for faster optimization. Foundry-provided silicon-verified RF device models are incorporated into the synthesis procedure for accurate parasitic modeling. The proposed synthesis tool can be used as an independent circuit design environment for LNAs or, alternatively, as an auxiliary tool generating an initial design for a commercial design environment to reduce design time. To validate the proposed approach, an LNA operating at 900 MHz is synthesized and fabricated in a 0.25-mum CMOS technology. Measurement results are presented, which shows the viability of the proposed synthesis tool.