The increasing demand for wireless and wireline transceivers necessitates a wide gain range and an accurate decibel (dB)-linear characteristic programmable-gain amplifier (PGA). We propose a five-stage “cell-based” PGA that combines four-stage coarse gain amplifiers and one-stage fine gain amplifier, eliminating the need for an additional exponential generator or complex digital processing circuit. Implemented in 65nm CMOS technology, the PGA achieves a gain range from 3.23dB to 66.06 dB with a gain error of less than ±0.4 dB. It also demonstrates a figure of merit (FOM) of 95.5 K, while consuming 1.06 mW of power consumption.