Described herein are ultra wide-band distributed RF (UWB-DRF) front-end receivers comprising composite cells distributed along transmission lines, where each composite cell comprises a low-noise amplifier (LNA) merged with a mixer. By merging the LNA and the mixer in each composite cell, the power consumption and chip area of the RF front-end is reduced. Further, the distributed architecture of the RF front-end allows it to operate over a wide bandwidth by absorbing the parasitic capacitances of the composite cells into the transmission lines of the RF-front end. Embodiments of the RF front-end provide wideband flat gain, low noise figure (NF), wideband linearity, and wideband matching at the inputs of the RF front-end. In an embodiment, a programmable resistance at the termination of the RF transmission line allows the RF front-end to trade off a few decibels of mismatch at the RF input for higher gain and lower NF.