On the Design of GaN Low Noise Amplifier for 5G Applications

In this paper, different topologies for GaN High Electron Mobility Transistor (HEMT) based Low Noise Amplifier (LNA) are presented. The targeted application is sub-6 GHz 5th generation mobile network. The LNAs were simulated in ADS and their performance were investigated by means of the gain, noise-figure, stability-factor and return loss. Common-source (CS), common-gate (CG), cascade and cascode multi-stage LNAs with and without feedback were covered in this investigation. The simulation results show that the cascode systems offer a greater stability factor at high frequency spectrum, with respect to the cascaded topology. At 6 GHz, the cascode CS-CG structure with feedback has a smaller return loss and a wider, flatter gain than a standard cascode CS-CG structure. The LC-ladder cascade CS-CS with feedback has a broader flat gain but a higher input return loss, whereas the standard cascaded CS-CS has a lower noise Figure and return loss but poorer stability and bandwidth.