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5 MAY 2008
806
I LETTER
SUMMARY An all CMOS variable gain amplifier (VGA) which fea- required VGA stages, leading to reduction of the power dis-
tures wide dB-linear gain range per stage (45 dB), low power consumption sipation, chip area, and cost. Consequently, the VGA with a
(1.32 mW), small chip size (0.13 mm2), and low supply voltage (1.2 V) is
wide dynamic gain range and low power dissipation is criti-
described. The dB-linear range is extended by reducing the supply voltage
of the conventional V-to-I converter. The two-stage VGA implemented in cally desired for low-power applications.
0.18 J1m CMOS offers 90 dB of gain variation, 3 dB bandwidth of greater Lowering the supply voltage is also an effective way of
than 21 MHz, and maximin input IP3 and PI dB, respectively, of -5/-42 reducing power consumption and it is the technology trend.
and -12/-50dBm. However, many of the existing CMOS analogue building
key words: variable gain amplifier (VGA), automatic gain control (AGC),
blocks, designed to operate with higher supply voltages, will
amplifier, analog circuit, transceiver
lose a significant amount of operating range and need to be
reconsidered. In this letter, the disadvantage at low-voltage
1. Introduction
operations is adopted as a mean to widen the dB-linear gain
range of the VGA drastically. The low supply voltage leads
Variable gain amplifiers (VGA) are important blocks to to low power consumption and the wider decibel-linear gain
accommodate the large dynamic range of signals [I], [2]. range reduces the number of the required VGAs such that
VGAs require dB-linear gain variation which can be satis- the power consumption and the chip size are reduced signif-
fied with components of the exponential 1- V characteristic. icantly. The circuit design detail is given in the following
Due to the square-law 1- V characteristic, CMOS transistors section.
cannot directly be applied for the dB-linear VGAs. Instead,
dB-linear performance is achieved by adopting the circuits 2. Newly Proposed VGA
that approximate the exponential equations [I], [2]. In this
work, the conventional VGA cell based on the well-known Figure I shows a block diagram of the two-stage VGA
pseudo-exponential equation which includes a V-to-I converter, two VGA cells, and a
buffer. In Fig. I, the VGA cell adopts (I) for dB-linear gain
y=!(x)=(I+x) (I) variation and the V-to-I converter generates currents to con-
(I - x)
trol the gain of the VGA cell. The buffer is added for mea-
is adopted as the basis for the proposed VGA design [2]. surement purposes only.
The conventional VGA that adopts (I) offers 15 dB of gain Unlike conventional VGAs based on (I), the proposed
variation with linearity error of less than ±0.5 dB [2]. Un- VGA adopts the V-to-I converter with distorted V-I char-
fortunately, there are many applications that require a wide acteristic due to supply voltage reduction to extend the dB-
dynamic gain range; for example, code-division multiple ac- linear gain variation drastically. The schematic of the V-to-I
cess (COMA) systems need 80 dB of the gain variation. To converter and VGA cell are shown in Figs. 2 and 3, respec-
cover such a wide dynamic gain range, up to 6 VGAs that
adopt (I) must be cascaded in the COMA system, leading
to high power dissipation, large chip area, high noise fig- v ••
ure, poor linearity, and high cost. The low-power VGA is
essential to reduce the overall power dissipation of the sys- v•.
tem. Moreover, a VGA with a wider dynamic gain range is
one of the efficient solutions to decrease the number of the
-20
200
~i!i' 80
0
~-
80
-60
-40
20
40
·80
100
\
?
/"
\
,"'r -200
//
//
--
---- at VDD~ I 8V
at VDD= I.2V
-100
--
----
Ideal line
at ~~D = 1.8V
\
\
,
-0.6 ·0.4 -0.2 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 -0.6 -0.4 -0.2 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6
MI4 CfRLI VCTRL (V) VC1RL (V)
variable
(a) (b)
gain
am plifier Fig. 4 Simulation for VDD = 1.2 and 1.8 V for (a) -It vs. VCTRL of V-
] To the to-I converter and (b) gain vs. VCTRL of the proposed VGA, (VB/AS = 0.9
C1RL,
and 0.7 V for VDD = 1.8 and 1.2 V, respectively).
Fig. 2 Schematic of the proposed V-to- I converter.
Ic,
Au = ( gm,M27,28
gm,M26,29 r IC2
(3)
mance, leading to the extension of the dB-linear gain range. gain versus VCTRL. In agreement with expectations, the pro-
The interesting aspect of the proposed VGA is that the posed VGA shows 90 dB (-45 - 45 dB) of gain variation
reduction in supply voltage, which tends to degrade circuit over a wide range of VCTRL (-0.4 - 0.4 V), which is a
performance in general, leads to an extension of the dB- significant improvement compared to conventional VGAs
linear gain range. Therefore, the proposed VGA is suit- that adopt (I) [2]. In Fig. 5, the proposed VGA offers
able for low-voltage and low-power applications. Since the about 85 dB of dB-linear range with linearity error of less
larger amount of dB-linear range reduces the number of than ± I dB. The measured 3 dB bandwidth is greater than
VGA stages, the proposed VGA offers advantages in power 21 MHz, and the maximin input IP3 and PI dB are -5/-42
dissipation, chip area, and cost. and -12/-50 dBm, respectively. Figure 6 shows the mi-
crophotograph of the tested chip where the active area oc-
3. Measurement Results cupies 0.13 mm2.
The proposed VGA described in this work represents
The proposed VGA is optimized for a supply voltage of a significant performance improvement in CMOS-based
1.2 V while dissipating 1.1 mA (excluding buffer) based on VGA designs. The key improvements are derived from
a 0.18 11m CMOS technology. Figure 5 shows the measured a huge extension of the dB-linear gain range by lowering
the supply voltage. The low supply voltage leads to low
power consumption. The wider decibel-linear gain range
" "2- 600
-0.4-20 I
I l') 4CDc:
e reduces the number of VGAs such that the power consump-
0-
20
40
-40
-60
-60.4 '0;
-2 I E
-4 m
, tion and the chip size are reduced significantly. Compared
0-8
2
-10
+1dB / to all previously-reported CMOS-based VGAs [I], [2], the
/..----
I '~---'~---- 1·'--_/ I, . proposed VGA offers lowest power, smallest size (lowest
I -1dB cost), and high performance solutions for the integrated low-
I
,,
I
voltage differential CMOS VGAs.
,I
I,I 4. Conclusions
I,
-- Gain vs. VcmL
- - -. Gain error
I
A wide dynamic range VGA by lowering the supply voltage
-0.2 0.0 0.2
has been presented. The wide gain range and the lower sup-
Vcnu. (V) ply voltage lead to low-power consumption and small chip
Fig. 5 VGA gain and linearity error vs. VCTRL. size. The proposed VGA can be used in many low-voltage
and low-power applications, such as medical equipments,
telecommunications systems, hearing aids, disk drives, etc.
Acknowledgements
References
[I] Q.-H. Duong, Q. Le, c.-w. Kim, and S.-G. Lee, "A 95-dB linear low-
power variable gain amplifier," IEEE Trans. Circuits Syst .. vo1.53.
no.8, pp.I648-1657. Aug. 2006.
[2] c.w. Mangelsdorf, "A variable gain CMOS amplifier with exponen-
Fig. 6 Microphotograph of the tested chip.
tial gain control," VLSI Circuits Dig. Tech. Papers, pp.146-149, 2000.