Chip-package co-design of a concurrent LNA in system-on-package for multi-band radio applications

Abstract

In this paper, we present a chip-package co-design of a concurrent low noise amplifier (LNA) in novel liquid crystal polymer (LCP) based system-on-package module for multiband radio transceivers. The module consists of a wideband LNA covering frequency range 1 GHz - 13 GHz and a multiband pass filter. By designing an appropriate multi-band passive filter, the wideband LNA can be configurated flexibly as a multi-band LNA that works currently across any different band in the above frequency range. In this work the multiband LNA is designed for 5 GHz wireless LAN and 2.5 GHz Bluetooth standards. The module is implemented with embedded chip technologies for system-on-package, which eliminates the constraints of off-chip pad drive capability and hence improves electrical performance. The design is implemented on novel liquid crystal polymer (LCP) substrate. The quality factors of key passive components such as inductors integrated on LCP substrate with thin film technologies is better than 30. The insertion loss of the band pass filter is around 3 dB and return loss is lower than -18 dB. The gain of the wideband LNA is better than 10 dB at frequency range from 1 GHz to 13 GHz. and its gain is better than 10 dB. The gain of the multi-band LNA is 8.5 dB and noise figure is 5.2 dB on the selected channels.