Noise performance of a ground gate wideband MMIC amplifier

A broadband ground gate amplifier was designed, fabricated and characterized. Noise parameters of the intrinsic HFETs were measured and simulated by using Pospieszalski noise model. Extracted drain and gate temperatures were used for the characterization of the amplifier noise properties. An input match better than ¿20 dB in a wide band from 2 to 6 GHz and ¿10 dB from 1-13 GHz with corresponding 11 dB gain was obtained. NFmin of 3 dB was found experimentally at room temperature. A dc power dissipation of less than 20 mW is possible to obtain with this device technology. The total chip area is 2×1.5 mm2. The active circuit area is less than 1 mm2. We have simulated amplifiers rf and noise performance with the wider gate HFET at the input.