A low voltage Q-band CMOS LNA with magnetic coupled cascode topology

Abstract

In this paper, a Q-band low noise amplifier (LNA) is designed using in 90-nm low power (LP) CMOS. This LNA achieves a high gain and low noise. Besides, a transformer is placed between the cascode devices to reduce the noise figure and enhance the stability, as well as also bandwidth. The LNA features a maximum small signal gain of 13.8 dB and a minimum noise figure of 3.8 dB at 37 GHz, with a power consumption of 18mW. The chip size is 0.93 x 0.52 mm 2 , including all the testing pads. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first magnetic coupled cascode LNA in Q-band reported to date.Index Terms -LNA, cascode, CMOS, MMIC.

Advances in Silicon Based Millimeter-Wave Monolithic Integrated Circuits

“…All reported techniques can reduce the NF, but they still require a high supply voltage in the multi-cascode topology. In order to reduce the NF and the supply voltage of the cascode or multi-cascode configuration simultaneously, a magnetic coupled technique is proposed in our previous work [47]. In this technique, the coupling effect of the transformer is used to couple the RF input signal between CG devices of the cascode or multi-cascode structures, which is different from [44] and [46].…”