A low-power Variable Gain Amplifier (VGA) is demonstrated in a commercial 0.18µm CMOS technology, with a chip size of 0.019mm 2 . To compensate the threshold voltage process variation, a control voltage level shift (CVLS) methodology is proposed. The VGA was measured with a dynamic range of 29dB with a ±0.62dB error. The total power consumption is 186µW, and the bandwidth is 26MHz. Keywords—VGA; exponential current; low power; sub- threshold; linear-in-dB I. INTRODUCTION Variable gain amplifier (VGA), the gain of which is a linear-in-dB function of control voltage or current, plays an important role in stabilizing the power of the receiver's output. Current trends make the power-efficiency requirement become an inevitable consideration. However, one great challenge is the design of low-power VGA. Unfortunately, the power of traditional PNP, pseudo-exponential approximation, digital controlled amplifier and some other solutions for VGA are too big for portable receivers