A Miniature Q-band CMOS LNA with quadruple-cascode topology

In this paper, a miniature Q-band low noise amplifier (LNA) is fabricated for demonstration using 90-nm Low Power (LP) CMOS technology. The quadruple-cascode topology is applied to achieve a high gain performance with a compact chip size. Besides, a transformer is placed between the cascode devices to reduce the noise figure and enhance the stability and also bandwidth of the LNA. The LNA features a maximum small signal gain of 20.3 dB and a minimum noise figure of 4.6 dB at 40 GHz, with a power consumption of 15 mW. The chip size is only 0.48 × 0.44 mm
²
, including all the testing pads. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first quadruple-cascode LNA in millimeter-wave (MMW) regime reported to date.