The Design of Wideband LNAs in 45nm SiGe BiCMOS

This work presents the design of two low-noise amplifiers (LNAs) with variations in the second amplification stage to study trade-offs in gain, bandwidth, and linearity. Implemented in a 45 nm SiGe BiCMOS process, the two designs achieved wideband gains (S21) from 16.2-55.0 GHz and 11.1-32.1 GHz with simultaneous broadband input matching (S11) bandwidths of 26.1-55.0 GHz and 11.6-33.4 GHz, respectively. The LNAs obtain a minimum noise figure (NF) of 3.4 dB and 2.3 dB, peak gains of 13.1 dB and 19.9 dB, and maximum IIP3s of 5.7 dBm and -4.7 dBm while using 18.0 mW and 14.4 mW of power from a 1.5 V supply. These performance metrics enable record FoM performance when compared to both state-of-the-art CMOS and SiGe LNA designs.