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US 7,890,069 B2Granted
Selectable low noise amplifier for wireless communication
AssigneeBroadcom Corporation
InventorsAristeidis I. Kyranas, Georgios S. Kamoulakos, Iason F. Vassilou, Konstantinos D. Vavelidis
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A low-noise amplifier in a receiver has a differential mode of operation and at least one single-ended mode of operation. A control signal is used to select between or among the modes and the switching between differential and single-ended operations may be performed on the fly.
Claims15
An apparatus comprising:
- a low-noise amplifier (LNA) circuit to provide differential amplification of an input signal and also to provide single-ended amplification of the input signal;
- and
- a switching circuit coupled to the LNA circuit to switch modes of operation between the differential amplification and single-ended amplification, wherein switching between the two modes of operation is controlled by a programmable control signal to programmably select between the differential amplification and the single-ended amplification dynamically during use, in which the single-ended amplification is used for power conservation and the differential amplification is used for higher performance.
An apparatus comprising:
- a first transistor having its gate coupled to a first input;
- a second transistor having its gate coupled to a second input and in which the first and second transistors are disposed to operate differentially to amplify signals on the first and second inputs;
- a third transistor coupled serially between the first transistor and one terminal of an inductive load;
- a fourth transistor coupled serially between the second transistor and a second terminal of the inductive load;
- a first switch coupled to a gate of the second transistor to activate the second and fourth transistors during a differential mode of operation to differentially amplify signals on both the first and second inputs, but to deactivate the second and fourth transistors during single-ended mode of operation when the first and third transistors amplify a signal on the first input as single-ended input.
2 more elements
A method comprising:
- selecting a mode of operation between differential amplification and single-ended amplification for a same low-noise amplifier (LNA) in a receiver;
- and
- switching between the two modes of operation based on a control signal for the LNA to amplify signal inputs on a pair of input lines to the LNA, wherein the switching between the two modes is controlled by a programmable control signal to programmably select between the differential amplification and the single-ended amplification dynamically during use, in which the single-ended amplification is used for power conservation and the differential amplification is used for higher performance.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.