A 3050-GHz Ultralow-Power Low-Noise Amplifier With Second-Stage Current-Reuse for Radio Astronomical Receivers in 90-nm CMOS Process

A Q-band (30-50 GHz) ultralow-power low-noise amplifier (LNA) for radio astronomical receivers in 90-nm CMOS technology is presented in this letter. A common source stage with source degeneration is utilized for simultaneous noise and impedance matching. To achieve high gain and low power consumption, the current-reused technique is adopted in this work. According to measurement, the proposed Q-band LNA achieves a 20.5-dB small signal gain with 26-GHz 3-dB bandwidth (25.5-51.5 GHz) and the lowest in-band noise figure (NF) of 4.2-dB noise. The LNA consumes only 10.1 mW with a compact chip area of 0.6 x 1 mm(2). Although this LNA is fabricated in 90-nm CMOS process, it achieves the state-of-the-art figure of merit (FOM) compared to other advanced CMOS processes.

Automated summary

This letter presents a Q-band (30-50 GHz) ultralow-power low-noise amplifier (LNA) for radio astronomical receivers in 90-nm CMOS technology. It achieves high gain and low power consumption by employing the current-reused technique and a common source stage with source degeneration for simultaneous noise and impedance matching. The measured results show that the proposed LNA has a 20.5-dB small signal gain, 26-GHz 3-dB bandwidth (25.5-51.5 GHz), the lowest in-band noise figure (NF) of 4.2 dB, and consumes only 10.1 mW power with a compact chip area of 0.6 x 1 mm(2). Despite being fabricated in 90-nm CMOS process, this LNA achieves the state-of-the-art figure of merit (FOM) compared to other advanced CMOS processes.