InP-HEMT X-band Low-Noise Amplifier With Ultralow 0.6-mW Power Consumption

Abstract

We report a single-stage InP-high-electron-mobility-transistor (HEMT) X-band low-noise amplifier (LNA) featuring an ultralow dc power consumption at room temperature. The LNA was fabricated with the ETH Zürich 100-nm InP-HEMT MMIC coplanar waveguide process. When operated with a dc power consumption of only 0.6 mW, our LNA delivers a gain of 9.0 ± 0.9 dB from 7 to 11 GHz with a minimum noise figure of 1.4 dB at 9.8 GHz. The excellent LNA performance is enabled by the favorable characteristics of our InP HEMTs under low-power-dissipation biases. For example, at a bias of <i xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">V</i> <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">DS</sub> = 0.5 V and <i xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">I</i> <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">DS</sub> = 66.2 mA/mm, our (0.1 × 2 × 50 μm <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sup> ) InP HEMTs feature cutoff frequencies of <i xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">fT</i> = 183 GHz and <i xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">f</i> <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">MAX</sub> = 230 GHz . The present results demonstrate the excellent capabilities of InP-HEMT technology for high-speed, low-voltage, and room-temperature low-power-consumption applications.