A Wideband Millimeter-Wave GaN Low-Noise Amplifier Using Multi-Stage Feedback Compensation

This paper presents a 10 to 30 GHz wideband GaN low-noise amplifier (LNA) designed using a 0.15-µm gate-length gallium nitride (GaN) high electron-mobility transistor (HEMT) process. Through a drain-to-gate feedback compensation technique, the transistor gain roll-off is mitigated, and the gain flatness is significantly improved. With the above technique adopted for each stage of the proposed LNA, improved gain response, stability, and reduced design complexity are obtained under a slight penalty on the noise figure (NF). Full layout simulation results show that the designed LNA delivers a flat small signal gain of 22.8 to 26 dB with a NF of 2.17 dB to 2.73 dB over 10–30 GHz.