Design and Simulation of a Compact, High Gain and High P1dB MMIC Based Low Noise Amplifier at V-Band

This paper presents the design and simulation of a I-Band MMIC based broadband low noise amplifier using a GaAs based pHEMT of 0.10 μm gate length. A 4-stage cascaded amplifier configuration has been chosen. Source inductive degeneration and feedback have been used simultaneously in order to achieve improved stability and gain flatness over the required bandwidth from 50 to 60 GHz. A flat gain of 23±1dB and a maximum noise figure of 3.2 dB have been achieved over the band within a chip size of 1.4 mm x 2.4 mm. The output 1dB compression point is also significantly high and is simulated to be 11.2 dBm. The 60-GHz band offers wide license-free bandwidth. The amplifier finds its application in point-to-point links for telecommunications back hauls, Wireless Personal Area Networks (WPAN) and Wireless HDMI.