A 29–37 GHz BiCMOS Low-Noise Amplifier with 28.5 dB Peak Gain and 3.1-4.1 dB NF

Abstract

This paper presents a 28.5 dB high-gain Ka-band low-noise amplifier (LNA) in a 0.25 µm SiGe:C BiCMOS technology. To achieve wide band (fractional bandwidth > 25 <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">%</sup> ) simultaneous noise and power matching with compact size, a 3-winding transformer based dualtank matching technique is proposed and implemented for the input matching. The LNA provides 28.5 dB peak gain at 32 GHz with a 3-dB gain bandwidth from 29 to 37 GHz. Within this bandwidth, it also achieves simultaneously low-noise (3.1-4.1 dB) and power matching (S <inf xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">11</inf> < −10 dB). The measured input IP3 and P <inf xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">1dB</inf> at 32 GHz are −12.5 dBm and - 22.0 dBm, respectively, and the total DC power consumption is 80 mW.