Cryogenic Operation of a Millimeter-Wave SiGe BiCMOS Low-Noise Amplifier

Wagner Ramírez*, Henrik Forstén, Mikko Varonen, Rodrigo Reeves, Mikko Kantanen, Kaynak Mehmet, Sergio Torres

*Corresponding author for this work

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticleScientificpeer-review

    11 Citations (Scopus)
    172 Downloads (Pure)

    Abstract

    In this letter, we report the design and characterization of a cryogenically cooled silicon germanium (SiGe) low-noise amplifier (LNA) covering a frequency range from 50 to 70 GHz. The amplifier was fabricated in 0.13-μm SiGe BiCMOS technology. At 20 K, the LNA showed stable operation and an average noise figure (NF) of 2.2 dB (191 K) in the 52-65-GHz frequency band. This means 4.4 times improvement compared to the noise temperature at room temperature conditions for the same frequency band. When biased to lowest noise operation at cryogenic conditions of 20 K, the measured small signal gain was 18.5 dB at 60 GHz, while the consumed power was 6.3 mW. According to the authors' knowledge, this is the first report on cryogenic millimeter-wave SiGe LNA and the lowest NF measured for a SiGe LNA in the 50-70-GHz frequency range.
    Original languageEnglish
    Article number8708938
    Pages (from-to)403-405
    JournalIEEE Microwave and Wireless Components Letters
    Volume29
    Issue number6
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 1 Jun 2019
    MoE publication typeA1 Journal article-refereed

    Funding

    This work was supported in part by the Academy of Finland through Academy Research Fellow Project MIDERI, HISENS, and MilliRad project and in part by Business Finland through the 5WAVE Project. The work of W. Ramírez was supported in part by CONICYT-PFCHA/Doctorado Nacional/2018-2118173 Scholarship. The work of R. Reeves was supported in part by CONICYT Project Basal under Grant AFB-170002 and in part by FONDECYT under Grant 1181620.

    Keywords

    • Cryogenic
    • low-noise amplifier (LNA)
    • monolithic microwave integrated circuit (MMIC)
    • noise
    • silicon germanium (SiGe)
    • OtaNano

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