A 60-GHz Current-Reused Cascode Noise-Canceling Low Noise Amplifier

In this brief, a current-reused noise-canceling low noise amplifier (LNA) operating at 60-GHz is proposed. To reduce the noise of cascode at millimeter-wave (mm-wave) frequency, an auxiliary path is introduced to neutralize the extra thermal noise of common-gate (CG) transistor caused by parasitic capacitance. The noise-canceling path is implemented in a current-reused way to prevent an excessive rise in dc power consumption. A size-aggregated self-coupling-canceling transformer is developed to decrease chip area without compromising noise cancellation effectiveness. The proposed cascode noise-canceling LNA is fabricated in a conventional 40-nm CMOS technology. The measurement results show a peak gain of 16.8 dB at 53.6 GHz and a 3-dB bandwidth from 50.6 to 67 GHz. The measured typical noise figure (NF) is 4.4–6.3 dB within the operating frequency range. The in-band input 1-dB compression point (IP1dB) is −13.0 dBm at 60 GHz. The proposed LNA can support 64-QAM with a 500-MHz channel bandwidth at 60 GHz achieving 2.3% Error Vector Magnitude (EVM).