A study of K-band gain-boosted amplifier using inductor coupling

To obtain a high-gain amplifier in the high-frequency band, such as K-band, this paper studies a circuit with inductor coupling based on a cascode amplifier. The core circuit of the amplifier consists of a source inductor connected to the source side of a cascode transistor and a gate inductor connected to the gate side. The measurement results showed that the gain of 16.8 dB at20 GHz, and the maximum gain of 18.7 dB at 18.9 GHz, confirming that a high gain can be obtained in the K-band. The process used was the TSMC 0.1S$\mu$m CMOS process.