2 – 20 GHz Ultra-Wideband Distributed Low Noise Amplifier

A 2-20GHz ultra-wideband monolithic distributed low noise amplifier of eight stages is designed and fabricated based on the 0.15pm GaAs PHEMT process. High gain bandwidth product can be realized by utilizing cascode as gain cells. Size of input/output transmission line and number of cells were optimized in order to achieve flat high gain and low noise performance. The chip size is 2.8mm × 1.4mm. Measured results show that: during the operating bandwidth from 2 to 20 GHz (VSWR<; 1.7), small signal gain is more than 17 dB which achieves 3 dB positive slope. The noise figure is less than 4 dB and the output power at a 1 dB gain compression point (p
_-1
) is more than 16 dBm in the band.