An ultra-low power K-band low-noise amplifier co-designed with ESD protection in 40-nm CMOS

This paper presents a K-band low noise amplifier (LNA) co-designed with ESD protection circuit in 40-nm CMOS technology. By treating ESD devices as a part of the input matching network, an ESD protected 24-GHz LNA is demonstrated with a NF of 3.2 dB under a power consumption of only 4.1 mW. The ESD protection network is composed of dual-diode and a gate-driven power clamp achieving an ESD level of 2.8 kV human body model (HBM). Owing to the co-design approach, the NF only degrades by 0.2 dB compared with the reference LNA without the ESD network. The ESD-LNA presents a power gain of 13.0 dB with the input and output return losses both greater than 10 dB. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report on a 24-GHz ESD-protected LNA in 40-nm CMOS.