Various transimpedance amplifier (TIA) arrangements for ultrasonic front-end receivers used in ultrasonic sensing applications are disclosed. An example TIA includes three common-source gain stages in a feedback loop with a common-gate stage. In some aspects, the TIA may include a level shifter configured to maintain the voltage at the gate of a transistor used to implement the first common-source gain stage of the feedback loop shifted by a certain amount with respect to the voltage at an input port to the TIA. In some aspects, at least portions of the TIA may be biased using bias currents that are configured to be process-, supply voltage-, and/or temperature-dependent. Various embodiments of the TIAs disclosed herein may benefit from one or more of the following advantages: reduced noise, reduced input impedance, reduced temperature coefficient of input impedance, and stability for a wide range of sensor frequencies.

Embodiments of an amplifiers and integrated circuits include a first transistor and a second transistor. A second current-carrying terminal of the first transistor may be coupled to a first current-carrying terminal of the second transistor and the control terminal of the second transistor may be coupled to a low impedance alternating current (AC) potential node. A bias network that includes a first circuit element and a second circuit element couples the second current-carrying terminal of the second transistor to the control terminal of the second transistor. The first circuit element may be configured to apply a portion of a potential at the second current-carrying terminal of the second transistor to the control terminal of the second transistor, and the second circuit element may be coupled between the control terminal of the second transistor and a fixed potential.

Methods and devices used in mobile receiver front end to support multiple paths and multiple frequency bands are described. The presented devices and methods provide benefits of scalability, frequency band agility, as well as size reduction by using one low noise amplifier per simultaneous outputs. Based on the disclosed teachings, variable gain amplification of multiband signals is also presented.

An active device and circuits utilized therewith are disclosed. In an aspect, the active device comprises an n-type transistor having a drain, gate and bulk and a p-type transistor having a drain, gate and bulk. The n-type transistor and the p-type transistor include a common source. The device includes a first capacitor coupled between the gate of the n-type transistor and the gate of the p-type transistor, a second capacitor coupled between the drain of the n-type transistor and the drain of p-type transistor and a third capacitor coupled between the bulk of the n-type transistor and the bulk of p-type transistor. The active device has a high breakdown voltage, is memory less and traps even harmonic signals.

The present invention relates to a novel and inventive compound device structure, enabling a charge-based approach that takes advantage of sub-threshold operation, for designing analog CMOS circuits. In particular, the present invention relates to a solid state device based on a complementary pair of n-type and p-type current field-effect transistors, each of which has two control ports, namely a low impedance port and gate control port, while a conventional solid state device has one control port, namely gate control port. This novel solid state device provides various improvement over the conventional devices.

An amplifier applied to TIA is provided to suppress the noise caused by a current source. An amplifier constituting a transimpedance amplifier includes an inductor element inserted between a current source connected to an input terminal of an amplification stage and a power source voltage line. The current source includes a first transistor in which a base terminal is connected to a current control bias and a collector terminal is connected to the input terminal. The inductor element is inserted between the emitter terminal of the first transistor and the power source voltage line.

A common gate amplifier circuit configured to provide decreased voltage transients in the input voltage due to reverse gain. A second FET transistor is connected in series with a first FET of the common gate amplifier to function as an additional capacitive voltage divider between the amplifier output and the amplifier input without influencing the input or output currents. The first FET transistor, coupled to the amplifier input, may be a low voltage FET and smaller than the second FET transistor, which is coupled to the amplifier output. Both FET transistors are preferably enhancement mode GaN FET transistors and may be integrated into a single semiconductor chip with a single internal bias voltage divider.

Disclosed is an amplifying circuit and method. In one embodiment, an amplifying circuit, includes: a common-gate (CG) amplifier, wherein the CG amplifier comprises a first transistor, wherein source terminal and body terminal of the first transistor is coupled together through a first resistor.

An integrated circuit is provided which can sense the drain voltage of an active heterojunction transistor under different conditions and can adjust a driving signal of a gate terminal of the active heterojunction transistor in order to limit conduction losses and/or switching losses.

An apparatus includes an amplifying circuit configured to include stacked first and second transistors, and to amplify a signal input from an input terminal during an operation in an amplifying mode, and provide the amplified signal to an output terminal, and a negative feedback circuit comprising first to nth sub-negative feedback circuits, each corresponding to a separate gain mode included in the amplifying mode, wherein the negative feedback circuit is configured to provide a variable resistance value to determine a negative feedback gain based on each of the separate gain modes.