A 1.4-mW Ka-band Low Noise Amplifier Using Self-Resonant Transformer Matching in 90-nm CMOS Process

An ultralow-power Ka-band low-noise amplifier (LNA) for next-generation radio astronomical receivers, fabricated in 90-nm CMOS technology, is presented in this paper. To reduce noise factor and bias current simultaneously, the gatesource transformer feedback (TF. Feedback) technique is selected to make a compromise between noise figure and input matching. From the measurement results, the proposed Ka-band LNA achieves a 19.1-dB small-signal gain with a 3.6-GHz 3-dB bandwidth (34.2-37.8 GHz) and a noise figure of 4.2 dB with only 1.4 mW dc power consumption (Pdc). To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this LNA shows the highest figure of merit (FoM), which is 3950 (1/W), among published Ka-band ultralow power LNAs.