Design of a wideband low noise amplifier for radio-astronomy applications

In this work, the authors discuss the design of two low noise amplifiers (LNA) based on 1 μm gate-length pHEMT InP transistors and using two different topologies. Designed for radio astronomy applications, the first is a cascode circuit with a maximum gain of 15 dB and noise figure of 0.6 dB, while the second is a 2-stage cascaded amplifier with 27 dB of gain and 0.63 dB of noise figure. The two amplifiers exhibit an input 1 dB compression point of -22 dBm and -26 dBm respectively, and a third order input intercept point of -10 dBm and -5 dBm, respectively.