Millimeter wave MMIC low noise amplifiers using a 0.15 μm commercial pHEMT process

Abstract

This paper presents millimeter wave monolithic microwave integrated circuit (MMIC) low noise amplifiers using a 0.15 μm commercial pHEMT process. After carefully investigating design considerations for millimeter-wave applications, with emphasis on the active device model and electromagnetic (EM) simulation, we designed two single-ended low noise amplifiers, one for Q-band and one for V-band. The Q-band two stage amplifier showed an average noise figure of 2.2 dB with an 18.3 dB average gain at 44 GHz. The V-band two stage amplifier showed an average noise figure of 2.9 dB with a 14.7 dB average gain at 65 GHz. Our design technique and model demonstrates good agreement between measured and predicted results. Compared with the published data, this work also presents state-of-the-art performance in terms of the gain and noise figure.