Temperature Dependence of pHEMT-Based LNA Performance for VSAT Applications

From a complete characterization in terms of noise and scattering parameters carried out at room temperature in the 8-16 GHz frequency range, the noisy small-signal model of a pseudomorphic HEMT series has been extracted. The transistor scattering parameters have been subsequently measured at lower temperatures (down to -50 °C) by placing the device text fixture in a thermo-controlled chamber. An accurate noisy model has then been extracted by determining the circuit element values at the different temperatures. The trade-off performance of a pHemt-based LNA for VSAT receiver system applications has been investigated vs. frequency and temperature.