A SiGe BiCMOS W-Band LNA with 5.1 dB NF at 90 GHz

This paper presents a W-band low-noise amplifier using an advanced 90nm SiGe BiCMOS technology. The 4-stage common-emitter amplifier results in a gain of 18-19 dB at 90-100 GHz with a 3-dB bandwidth of 75-105 GHz. The measured noise figure is <; 6.5 dB from 85-100 GHz and with a minimum of 5.1 dB at 90 GHz averaged over four different chips. An input P1dB of -20 dBm and an output P1dB/Psat of -3/+2.1 dBm was achieved at 90 GHz, with a power consumption of 43 mW. To our knowledge, this represents the lowest noise W-band amplifier to-date using silicon technologies.