A ku-ka band low noise amplifier in 0.25 μM SiGe BiCMOS technology

Low Noise Amplifiers(LNA) are electronic circuits that provide high gain but maintain as low noise as possible. LNA is one of the main building blocks of the RF receiver circuit. It is used at the front-end of the receiver. These receivers require high-performance LNA with wide bandwidth, high gain and low noise.This report presents the design of a LNA operating over 14.3 GHz to 37.46 GHz,with midband gain of 18.25 dB at around 25 GHz. This circuit can be used for Ku-Ka band receiver application. The circuit is designed using IHP SG25H1 library (0.25 μm SiGe BiCMOS technology). The proposed LNA design consistsof two stages. In the first stage, a cascode topology is used followed by thea common-emitter stage. The aim for this LNA design was to achieve a wide operating bandwidth, with at least 15 dB of gain and noise figure below 5dB. The simulation results for designed LNA meets the above mentioned specifications. All the simulations are done in AWR. The useful formula and theory are also included in this report.