SiGe HBT X-Band LNAs for Ultra-Low-Noise Cryogenic Receivers

Author

Thrivikraman, Tushar K. ; Yuan, Jiahui ; Bardin, Joseph C. ; Mani, Hamdi ; Phillips, Stanley D. ; Kuo, Wei-Min Lance ; Cressler, John D. ; Weinreb, Sander

Author_Institution

Sch. of Electr. & Comput. Eng., Georgia Inst. of Technol., Atlanta, GA

Volume

18

Issue

7

fYear

2008

fDate

7/1/2008 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

476

Lastpage

478

Abstract

We report results on the cryogenic operation of two different monolithic X-band silicon-germanium (SiGe) heterojunction bipolar transistor low noise amplifiers (LNAs) implemented in a commercially-available 130 nm SiGe BiCMOS platform. These SiGe LNAs exhibit a dramatic reduction in noise temperature with cooling, yielding of less than 21 K (0.3 dB noise figure) across X-band at a 15 K operating temperature. To the authors´ knowledge, these SiGe LNAs exhibit the lowest broadband noise of any Si-based LNA reported to date.

Keywords

BiCMOS integrated circuits; Ge-Si alloys; MMIC amplifiers; cryogenic electronics; heterojunction bipolar transistors; low noise amplifiers; microwave bipolar transistors; microwave receivers; BiCMOS platform; HBT X-band LNA; SiGe; broadband noise; cooling; heterojunction bipolar transistor; size 130 nm; temperature 15 K; ultra-low-noise cryogenic receiver; Heterojunction bipolar transistor (HBT); low noise amplifiers (LNAs); silicon-germanium (SiGe);

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Microwave and Wireless Components Letters, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1531-1309

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/LMWC.2008.925104

Filename

4538245