US Patent 7902923 Common-gate common-source amplifier

Techniques for integrating a common-source and common-gate amplifier topology in a single amplifier design. In one aspect, an input voltage is provided to both a common-source amplifier and a common-gate amplifier. The output voltages of the common-source amplifier and the common-gate amplifier are provided to a difference block for generating a single-ended voltage proportional to the difference between the output voltages. When applied to the design of, e.g., low-noise amplifiers (LNA's), the disclosed techniques may offer improved noise performance over the prior art.