A 1mm2 two stage LNA and SP2T switch RFIC FEM for WLAN 802.11a applications

This paper presents a 1mm
²
monolithic microwave integrated circuit (MMIC) LNA/SP2T switch front end module (FEM) solution based on E/D mode GaAs pHEMT technology for WLAN 802.11a applications. The proposed FEM has a two stage Enhancement-mode pHEMT LNA and Depletion-Mode pHEMT SP2T switch fully integrated on a single die with an area of 0.916×0.95mm
²
. The SP2T switch in the FEM enables WLAN transmit (TX) and receive (RX) at 4.9-5.85GHz. The receive path has an LNA with bypass mode which is controlled by a 1 bit LNA Enable control. At 3.3V supply, the FEM in the RX LNA path shows a 2.1dB noise figure with 16dB typical gain including the switch loss, the measured input third order intercept point (IIP3) and output third order intercept point (OIP3) are 2dBm and 18dBm respectively. The module has an RX DC blocking cap and VDD bypass cap integrated on die which reduces BoM count and cost for the end customer. The final die is in a 2×2mm QFN package and it passes 1000V ESD human body model (HBM).