A new large dynamic-range variable gain amplifier (VGA) with improved dB linearity is presented. The traditional cascade VGA has the disadvantages of gain mismatch between sub-stages and difficulty of employing mismatch cancelation or suppression algorithms. In this paper, switch arrays were used to make the sub-stages or called gain cells in the coarse-tuning stage (CTS) work independently and therefore prevent the integral operation of the gain errors. Then, a second-order mismatch-shaping DEM was applied conveniently to the CTS and shown to be a useful design technique in improving the dB-linearity performance. The cascade VGA and its second-order mismatch-shaping DEM had been integrated in a 2.4-GHz receiver chip which was fabricated in a 0.18-mu m CMOS technology with a supply voltage of 1.8V. Measurement results showed that the gain errors were significantly reduced with second-order mismatch-shaping DEM with respect to the traditionally thermometric decoding over a temperature range of [-40, 80] degrees C. Copyright (c) 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.