Miniature Switchable Millimeter-Wave BiCMOS Low-Noise Amplifier at 120/140 GHz Using an HBT Switch

• Published in: Micromachines (Basel) Vol. 10; no. 10; p. 632
• Main Authors: Heredia, Julio, Ribó, Miquel, Pradell, Lluís, Wipf, Selin Tolunay, Göritz, Alexander, Wietstruck, Matthias, Wipf, Christian, Kaynak, Mehmet
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Basel MDPI AG 21.09.2019; MDPI
• Subjects: Amplifiers; Circuits; CMOS; Design; frequency-reconfigurable LNA; hetero junction bipolar transistor (HBT); Heterojunction bipolar transistors; low-noise amplifier (LNA); Microelectromechanical systems; Millimeter waves; multimodal circuit; Noise; Radio frequency; RF switch; Semiconductor devices; SiGe BiCMOS; Simulation
• ISSN: 2072-666X; 2072-666X
• DOI: 10.3390/mi10100632

A 120–140 GHz frequency-switchable, very compact low-noise amplifier (LNA) fabricated in a 0.13 µm SiGe:C BiCMOS technology is proposed. A single radio-frequency (RF) switch composed of three parallel hetero junction bipolar transistors (HBTs) in a common-collector configuration and a multimodal three-line microstrip structure in the input matching network are used to obtain a LNA chip of miniaturized size. A systematic design procedure is applied to obtain a perfectly balanced gain and noise figure in both frequency states (120 GHz and 140 GHz). The measured gain and noise figure are 14.2/14.2 dB and 8.2/8.2 dB at 120/140 GHz respectively, in very good agreement with circuit/electromagnetic co-simulations. The LNA chip and core areas are 0.197 mm2 and 0.091 mm2, respectively, which supposes an area reduction of 23.4% and 15.2% compared to other LNAs reported in this frequency band. The experimental results validate the design procedure and its analysis.