Amplifiers Exploiting Thermal Noise Canceling: A Review

Wide-band LNAs suffer from a fundamental trade-off between noise figure NF and source impedance matching, which limits NF to values typically above 3dB. Recently, a feed-forward noise canceling technique has been proposed to break this trade-off. This paper reviews the principle of the technique and its key properties. Although the technique has been applied to wideband CMOS LNAs, it can just as well be implemented exploiting transconductance elements realized with other types of transistors. To examplify this claim, measurement results on a bipolar amplifier exploiting noise cancellation will also be presented