Stacked-Cascode Current Steering Architecture for Gallium Nitride Variable-Gain LNAs

This work presents a gallium nitride (GaN) variable-gain low-noise amplifier (VGLNA) using for the first time a stacked-cascode current steering architecture. The simulation results show that an extensive gain variation range can be achieved without degrading other key performance parameters. This technique significantly outperforms the capabilities of VGLNAs based on controlling the biasing voltage of the amplifying transistor, which is limited by a notable input impedance mismatching.