80 nm InGaAs MOSFET W-band low noise amplifier

Abstract

In this paper, an 80 nm InGaAs MOSFET W-band MMIC low noise amplifier (LNA) is presented. The technology uses 4' GaAs substrates with a molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) grown metamorphic buffer to realize the InGaAs/InAlAs device heterostructure. For a 2 × 20 μm gate width transistor a transit frequency fT of 226 GHz was extrapolated. The transistors show a low gm dispersion of only 2 %. A two-stage cascode configuration is used for the W-band LNA circuit, which was processed in MOSFET and HEMT technology for comparison. The MOSFET LNA achieves a linear gain of more than 18 dB in the frequency range from 71 to 103 GHz with an associated noise figure between 3.3 and 4.5 dB. To the best of the authors knowledge, this is the first reported InGaAs MOSFET millimeter-wave MMIC.