A 22-37 GHz low noise amplifier with 2.8 dB mean noise figure and+22.9 dBm output 3rd-order intercept point for 5th generation applications

This paper presents a wideband 22-37 GHz low noise amplifier (LNA) realized in a 0.25 mu m SiGe BiCMOS technology. The design incorporates additional noise matching between the cascode transistors to minimize the noise figure (NF) degradation. The second stage incorporates an active balun architecture with a tail inductor to improve the common-mode rejection ratio (CMRR). To extend the bandwidth, a capacitive feed forward path is added at the second stage. The LNA presents a minimum in-band NF of 2.3 dB from 22-37 GHz. The achieved 3 dB-gain bandwidth is larger than 15 GHz, with a peak gain of 20.8 dB at 28 GHz. The output 3rd-order intercept point (OIP3) is + 22.9 dBm for a total power consumption of 94 mW. The area of the core circuit is 0.35 x 0.47 mm2. To the author's knowledge, the LNA shows the best overall performance compared to the existing silicon-based LNAs.