A 0.1-1.7 GHz, 1.1dB NF low noise amplifier for radioastronomy application

In this paper, a fully-differential low noise amplifier based on a classical cascode topology enhanced with noise cancelling technique is presented. This circuit achieves a 0.1-1.7 GHz bandwidth. The chip surface is less than 0.8 mm
²
. Measured circuit gain is greater than 18 dB and the 3 dB bandwidth is reached for a frequency of 18 GHz. The achieved noise figure is as low as 1.1 dB at 250 MHz and is lower than 1.3 dB all over the passband. This chip has been implemented using NXP QUBlC4G SiGe BiCMOS process.