A Non-Intrusive Self-Calibration Method for the Circuit Design of Inductorless Low Noise Amplifier

This paper calibrates an inductorless LNA’s NF and S11 based on non-intrusive self-calibration. Since the NF and S11 of the inductorless LNA depend on transconductance and channel resistance of transistors which have a relationship with the transistors’ port voltage, we use measured dc voltage from the LNA to estimate its NF and S11. Also, we choose the LNA’s bias current and the ratio of the current mirror providing current for PMOS bias transistor as tuning knobs to adjust the LNA’s S11 and NF. To realize non-intrusive self-calibration, measured dc voltage and currents from dummy circuits are used to estimate the LNA’s S11 and NF. Different dummy sizes are used, and we find that there is a trade-off between dummy size and calibration results. The circuits are implemented in 22-nm ultra-low leakage CMOS technology and the calibration algorithm was implemented with Matlab. The simulation results show that a 15.5% yield improvement could be obtained when dc voltages are measured from the primary LNA with current from a 1/2 scaled current mirror and a yield improvement from 11% to 16.5% could be obtained when dc voltages and currents are measured from different sets of dummy circuits.