Design and Evaluation of a 10 GHz LNA with Balun and Diodes for HBM and CDM ESD Protection in 28 nm CMOS FD-SOI

This article presents a Low Noise Amplifier (LNA) protected against electrostatic discharges (ESD) for wireless communication systems around 10 GHz. The protection of the LNA is achieved in two stages. A balun is used to provide, simultaneously, input impedance matching and an effective primary protection against ESDs of the "Human Body Model" (HBM) type without surface loss compared to a classical matching using an inductance. Then, a secondary protection is inserted at the input transistor gate level to guard against ESDs of the "Charged Device Model" (CDM) type. Post-layout simulations (PLS) are provided to verify the radio-frequency (RF) performance of the designed LNA, while CDM measurements on fabricated devices validate the proposed ESD protections.