Analysis and benchmarking of graphene based RF low noise amplifiers

In recent years, there has been great interest in utilizing graphene based electronics for high frequency RF applications. To this end, researchers have demonstrated several key applications using graphene devices [1-3]. One application of interest is the low noise amplifier (LNA), where graphene´s high mobility and high velocity saturation can potentially allow for very high frequency of operation as well as low noise. To this end, [4] has demonstrated a 10dB graphene amplifier, yet there exists no experimental study investigating the linearity of a graphene LNA. In this study we analyze the third order intermodulation product, gain compression and high frequency noise performance of graphene transistors for LNA application and benchmark it with other RF device technologies. The graphene amplifier (un-matched) exhibits an output third order intercept (OIP3) of 19dBm and input 1dB gain compression (P_{in, 1dB}) of 5.6dBm. We also report excellent noise performance for the graphene transistor, with intrinsic NF_min of 0.26dB (extrinsic 1.26dB) at 1GHz.