A Design Approach for SiGe Low-Noise Amplifiers Using Wideband Input Matching

Abstract

This paper investigates the feasibility of wideband low-noise amplifiers in bipolar silicon-germanium IC technology. Three different design techniques are compared and the most promising one is analyzed in detail and examined on a design example. We propose a design approach based on an LC-ladder structure as the input matching network. Used in combination with the cascode structure amplifier with inductive degeneration, the dual-LC tank employs two resonant tanks so as to achieve wideband input power matching and noise matching simultaneously. Following the design procedure described in the paper, a 20–40 GHz low noise amplifier is designed and the simulation results are provided to verify the proposed approach.