We report on robust and low-power-consumption InP- and GaN-HEMT Low-Noise-Amplifiers (LNAs) operating in Q-band frequency range. A multi-stage common-gate (CG) amplifier with current reuse topology was used. To improve the survivability of the CG amplifier, we introduced a feedback resistor at the gate bias feed. The design technique was adapted to InP- and GaN-HEMT LNAs. The 75nm gate length InP HEMT LNA exhibited a gain of 18dB and a noise figure (NF) of 3dB from 33 to 50GHz. The DC power consumption was 16mW. The Robustness of the InP HEMT LNA was tested by injecting a millimeter-wave input power of 13dBm for 10 minutes. No degradation in a small signal gain was observed. The fabricated 0.12µm gate length GaN HEMT LNA exhibited a gain of 15dB and an NF of 3.2dB from 35 to 42GHz. The DC power consumption was 280mW. The LNA survived until an input power of 28dBm.

This paper presents the design of a wideband low noise amplifier (LNA) for the 3GPP LTE (3rd Generation Partnership Project Long Term Evolution) standard. The proposed LNA uses a common gate topology with a noise cancellation technique for wideband (0.7 to 2.7 GHz) and low noise operation. The capacitive cross coupling technique is adopted for the common gate amplifier. Consequently input matching is achieved with lower transconductance, thereby reducing the power consumption and noise contribution. The LNA is designed in a 0.18 µm process and the simulations show lower than -10 dB input return loss (S11), and 2.42.6 dB noise figure (NF) over the entire operating band (0.72.7 GHz) while drawing 9 mA from a 1.8 V supply.

RF MOSFET's are usually measured in common source configuration by a 2-port network analyzer, and the common gate and common drain S-parameters cannot be directly measured from a conventional 2-port test structure. In this work, a 4-port test structure for on-wafer measurement of RF MOSFET's is proposed. Four-port measurements for RF MOSFET's in different dimensions and the de-embedded procedures are performed up to 20 GHz. The S-parameters of the RF MOSFET in common source (CS), common gate (CG), and common drain (CD) configurations are obtained from a single DUT and one measurement procedure. The dependence of common source S-parameters of the device on substrate bias are also shown.