A Sub-IV, 72 μW Stacked LNA-VCO for Wireless Sensor Network Applications

Wireless sensor network (WSN) and Internet-of-Things (IoT) applications demand RF transceivers with extremely low power dissipation. An ultra-low power combined LNA-VCO is presented in this work with RF performance beyond the requirements of the intended application. The LNA current is lowered by factor of 12 in comparison with a standard common-gate LNA and it achieves impedance matching to 50 Ω thanks to current reuse combined with passive gain boosting. Stacking the VCO and the LNA voltage and power efficiency are improved even further. The power consumption of combined LNA-VCO is only 72 μW under a supply voltage of 0.9V. Simulation results in 40 nm CMOS technology at 2.4 GHz show and has a phase noise of -105.8 dBc/Hz at 1 MHz offset frequency, corresponding to a FoM of 194.1 dBc/Hz.