Design of a Wideband Low Noise Amplifier for a FMCW Synthetic Aperture Radar in 130 nm SiGe BiCMOS Technology

Abstract

In this paper, design of a wideband low noise amplifier for a FMCW synthetic aperture radar is discussed. In the first part, the paper describes the fundamentals of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) technique and Frequency Modulated Continuous Wave (FMCW) modulation. The solutions of wideband low-noise amplifiers are described subsequently. It is found that a two-stage common-emitter (CE) Low Noise Amplifier (LNA) allows the most satisfactory parameters to be achieved among the investigated solutions. The simulations of the LNA predict a 4.5 dB noise figure, 16.2 dB conversion gain, operating band from 30 GHz to 40 GHz, reflection coefficients below −10 dB and power consumption equal to 9.3 mW. The LNA was designed in IHP − 130 nm SiGe BiCMOS technology and the simulations were performed with Cadence SpectreRF.