• JSTS:Journal of Semiconductor Technology and Science
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• 제14권5호
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• pp.579-587
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• 2014

This paper presents a variable gain amplifier (VGA) for an analog front-end (AFE) of ultrasound medical imaging. This VGA has a closed-loop topology and shows a 37-dB-linear characteristic with a single-stage amplifier. It consists of an op-amp, a non-binary-weighted capacitor array, and a gain-control block. This non-binary-weighted capacitor array reduces the required number of capacitors and the complexity of the gain-control block. The VGA has been fabricated in a 0.35-mm CMOS process. This work gives the largest gain range of 37 dB per stage, the largest P1 dB of 9.5 dBm at the 3.3-V among the recent VGA circuits available in the literature. The voltage gain is controlled in the range of [-10, 27] dB in a linear-in-dB scale with 16 steps by a 4-bit digital code. The VGA has a bandpass characteristic with a passband of [20 kHz, 8 MHz].