Comparison of advanced transistor technologies with regard to their noise figures

For the realisation of mobile communication products in the low GHz range a lot of different technologies are available. The well known GaAs technologies with MESFETs and heterostructures are in keen competition with Si and SiGe bipolar and latterly CMOS technologies. Some of these circuits, such as low noise amplifiers (LNA's), require a optimisation for minimum noise figure. Thus an evaluation of the different technologies with regard to the noise figure is of great interest. This paper aims at classifying different technologies concerning their noise performance.