A Broadband Low Noise Amplifier MMIC in 0.

15m
GaAs pHEMT Technology
Bo CHEN, Wen HUANG, Guang YANG, and Yunchuan GUO2
University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 611731, China

Abstract-This paper describes the design and simulated pHEMT was chosen for the second and the third stage. That is
performance of 18-40GHz MMIC low noise amplifier (LNA). A because increasing a little size of pHEMT in the first stage can
three stages amplifier has been designed and developed using
0.15um gate length GaAs/InGaAs/AlGaAs pHEMT technology. greatly ease the difficulty of our input matching circuit design
Self-biased and resistive matching technologies have been used to at the cost of only limited degeneration of minimum noise
enhance the electrical specifications like return loss and gain figure. This is extremely appropriate for our broadband design
flatness. The simulated data shows better than 3.1 dB of noise consideration. For low-noise application, it is empirically to
figure with an associated gain of more than 17.5 dB over the bias at 10% of its saturation current (Idss), but it is found that at
frequency band of 18-40 GHz. Over the range of 19-40 GHz, it
could achieve better than 2 dB of noise figure with an associated this bias condition, the gain is quite low at high frequency. So
gain of 22f2dB. a tradeoff should be made between gain and noise and thus the
current was reasonably raised to approximately 30% of its
I. INTRODUCTION saturation current. Each stage is biased individually to prevent
possible feedback loop from the bias circuit.
As the key component in any front and receiver chain, the
Fig. 2(a) shows the self-biased technology which was used
low noise amplifier dictates the dynamic range of the receiver.
in the biased network design of the second and third stage.
With systems and applications evolving in the mm-wave
Because the first stage amplifier dominates the noise figure of
spectrum, the inherent capabilities of MMICs make them the
the whole circuit, we still use the gate and drain biased
only realistic choice. MMIC LNAs with Low noise, high gain,
network. To realize the gain flatness, resistive matching
good return loss, low power dissipation, high reliability and
technology was used in the matching networks, like fig.2 (b)
compact size are required aggressively for many system
shows. This topology could induce different frequency
applications.
response at different frequency band which make it possible to
In order to achieve the lowest possible noise figure, the
enhance the stability at low frequency band on one hand and
preferred circuit topology is the reflection noise matched input.
realize forward gain slope on the other hand. However,
Fujimoto et al. [1] report a Ka band LNA with a 1.0 dB noise
resistance could make the noise figure worse at the low
figure at 32 GHz. However this amplifiers bandwidth is
frequency band. Therefore, to achieve better noise figure at
limited. Recently, the widely used balanced amplifier has been
the low frequency band, resistance should be added into the
reported to have low NF, wide band and good input matching
matching network only after the first stage amplifier.
[2-4]. However, when demanding high gain, the balanced
topology would increase the chip size and not be suit to keep
high gain over 40GHz.
The objective of this work is to develop a LNA covering
both K- and Ka-band based on MMIC technology with good Figure 1. Simplified schematic of proposed single-ended three stages LNA.
gain flatness. A three stage single-ended amplifier is designed.
Source series negative feedback is used to move the optimal
noise impedance close to the input match impedance which
greatly alleviates the contradiction between noise and input
VSWR. Lossy match method is applied to make compensation
(a)
for the gain roll off of the transistors. Thus flat small signal
gain response is achieved.

II. CIRCUIT DESIGN

The circuit design was based on the small signal equivalent
circuit and noise model issued by the foundry. (b)
Fig.1 shows the simplified schematic of the proposed Figure 2. (a).Topology of self-biased network. (b). Topology of resistive
matching network and its effect on forward gain.
single-ended three stages LNA. Two connected 2 x 45 m
pHEMT were chosen for the first stage and single 2 x 45 m As shown in Fig.3, an inductive series feedback is applied.
The inductances Ls is implemented by using high-impedance

978-1-4244-5708-3/10/$26.00 2010 IEEE 1941 ICMMT 2010 Proceedings

microstrip lines with a length of L. Fig. 4 shows that the noise
resistance Rn is reduced a lot by adding this inductive series
feedback network. It would be very helpful to provide
improvements of the noise performance and input matching
simultaneously, espeically for the design of wide band LNA.
In addition, as shown in Fig. 5, the stability factors for
different lengths of the source inductive microstrip were
plotted. It can be seen that this inductance (L=70 m) can
improve the K factor significantly, especially in the higher
frequency band. It brings the K factor greater than one at
frequency over 36GHz. Fig. 5 also shows that a longer
microstrip line (L=180 m) has a wider stable frequency range.
In our design, we choose the inductor length around 70 m.
Fig 6. is the layout of LNA (2h1 mm2). Fig.5. shows the
comparison of simulated performances of S parameters. The
small signal gain is more than 17.5 dB over the range of 18-
40GHz. The simulated data shows that it could achieve the
maximum 24dB at 22GHz and the minimum 17.5dB at
18GHz. The gain flatness is 2dB over the range of 20-40GHz.
However, the small signal gain is less than 20dB at 18Ghz.
The reasons for that can be concluded as follows. First, the
parasitic parameters caused by module affect the frequency
response at high frequency band and therefore narrow the
working band. Second, the small signal gain at the low
frequency band is sensitive to the resistance in the matching
network.

Figure 3. Simplified pHEMT equivalent circuit with additional inductance Ls Figure 6. Layout of LNA

25
20
15
10
5
0
15 20 25 30 35 40 45
freq, GHz
Figure 4. The effect of inductance Ls on the noise resistance. Solid line
represents the pHEMT without inductance Ls, and the inverted triangle line (a)
represents the pHEMT with inductance Ls.
0
-5 S11
-10
-15
-20 S22

-25
15 20 25 30 35 40 45
freq, GHz

Figure 5. The effect of length of inductance Ls on the stable factor (b)

Figure 7. Comparison of measured and simulated performances of S
parameters.
III. SIMULATED PERFORMANCE

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 The simulated noise figure is shown in Fig.8. It is less than frequency band the noise figure is less than 3.1 dB. The small
3.1 dB from 18GHz to 40GHz and especially less than 2dB signal gain is The small signal gain is more than 17.5 dB over
from 25GHz to 40 GHz. the range of 18-40GHz and more than 20 dB over the range of
7 19-40GHz with flatness of 2dB.

6 ACKNOWLEDGMENT

5 The authors wish to acknowledge the assistance and support

( )

of the National Science Foundation by the China part under

4 Grant 60701017 and part under Grant 60876052.
3 REFERENCES
2 [1] S. Fujimoto, T. Katoh, T. Ishida, et al. , Ka-band ultra low noise MMIC
1 amplifier using pseudomorphic HEMTs, IEEE MTT-S International
Microwave Symposium Digest, Vol. 1, pp. 7 20, June 1997 .
15 20 25 30 35 40 45 [2] W. R. Deal, M. Biedenbender, et al., Design and Analysis of
Broadband Dual-Gate Balanced Low-noise Amplifiers, IEEE Journal
freq, GHz of Solid-State Circuits, Vol.42, No.10, pp.2107-2115, Oct. 2007.
Figure 8. Comparison of measured and simulated performances of noise [3] M. Kimishima, T. Ashizuka, 18-40 GHz semi-monolithic balanced
figure. cascade amplifiers using AlGaAs/InGaAs P-HEMT and GaAs
MESFET, IEEE MTT-S International Microwave Symposium Digest,
vol. 2, pp. 523 526, 1993.
IV. CONCLUSION [4] H. Wang, R. Lai, et al., A monolithic 75-110 GHz balanced InP-based
HEMT amplifier, IEEE Microwave and Guided Wave Letters, vol. 3,
By using higher yield and lower cost 0.15 m GaAs pp. 381-383, Oct. 1993.
[5] MMIC Foundry Design Manual PH15 Process, UMS, V3.01, October
pHEMT process, an 18 - 40 GHz monolithic low noise single- 2002.
ended three stages amplifier has been developed and achieved
a 2dB noise figure from 25 GHz to 40 GHz. In the whole

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