A Wideband <i>E</i>/<i>W</i>-Band Low-Noise Amplifier MMIC in a 70-nm Gate-Length GaN HEMT Technology
Fabian Thome, Peter Brückner, Stefano Leone, R. Quay
Abstract
This article reports on a gallium-nitride (GaN) low-noise amplifier (LNA) monolithic microwave integrated circuit (MMIC) with a 3-dB gain bandwidth (BW) from 63 to 101 GHz. The MMIC is fabricated in the Fraunhofer IAF 70-nm GaN-on-silicon-carbide (SiC) high-electron-mobility transistor (HEMT) technology. The four-stage common-source LNA exhibits an average noise figure (NF) of 3 dB for a measured frequency range from 75 to 101 GHz. The MMIC reaches a minimum NF of 2.8 dB at an operating frequency of 83 GHz. A mapping of two 100-mm wafers shows an excellent homogeneity with an 86% yield and an average NF of 3–3.3 dB. At 100 GHz, the LNA obtains output-referred 1-dB compression and third-order intercept points of 12.1 and 14.4 dBm, respectively. Furthermore, comprehensive investigations of the bias dependence of all measured performance parameters provide an insight into the presented device and LNA. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this MMIC demonstrates the lowest NF among GaN LNAs at <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${E}/{W}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> -band frequencies.