A 78–106-GHz Current-Reuse LNA With 4-dB Minimum NF and 12.5-mW Power Consumption Based on 130-nm SiGe Technology

Abstract

In this letter, a W-band broadband low-noise amplifier (LNA) with low noise figure (NF) and low power consumption is proposed based on a four-stage common-emitter (CE) topology. Noise measure (NM) is adopted as the design method to optimize the overall noise performance. The source degeneration inductor together with the slotted-metal-line-based input network is utilized to achieve the optimum NM and gain matching simultaneously. To enhance power efficiency, a zero-ohm-transmission-line (ZTL)-based current-reuse (CR) technique is employed. For verification, a wideband LNA is fabricated in 130-nm SiGe process with a chip size of 0.57 mm2. The measured results demonstrate a peak small-signal gain of 20.4 dB, a 3-dB gain bandwidth (BW) ranging from 78 to 106 GHz, a minimum NF of 4 dB, an IP1dB exceeding −19.8 dBm, and a power dissipation of 12.5 mW with a supply voltage of 2.5 V. Meanwhile, the proposed LNA exhibits an exceptionally high figure-of-merit (FoM) of 159.4 in terms of gain, BW, NF, and power consumption.