A 20 GHz low noise amplifier with active balun in a 0.25 um SiGe BICMOS technology

A 20 GHz low noise amplifier (LNA) with an active balun fabricated in a 0.25um SiGe BICMOS (f/sub t/ = 47 GHz) technology is presented The LNA achieves 7 dB of gain and a noise figure of 4.9 dB with all ports simultaneously matched with better than -16 dB of return loss. The amplifier is highly linear with an IP1dB of 0 dBm and IIP3 of 9 dBm, while consuming 14 mA of DC current from a 3.3v rail. To the authors knowledge, the LNA delivers the lowest reported noise figure and highest linearity for a silicon implementation of an (active balun /LNA) at 20 GHz.