Analysis and modeling of LNA circuit reliability

This paper systematically investigates the hot carrier (HC) and soft breakdown (SBD) effects on different low noise amplifier (LNA) circuit configurations. After the MOSFET device RF parameter degradations due to HC and SBD effects are experimentally evaluated, the HC and SBD induced performance degradations of three LNA configurations are evaluated for 0.16 /spl mu/m CMOS technology. The applications include Bluetooth and wireless LAN systems. The analytical equations for noise figure are derived, and the degradation models are also obtained. This work can help LNA designers to design more reliable LNA circuits.