On Wafer Noise Figure De-Embedding Method for CMOS Differential LNA

This paper presents on-wafer noise figure (NF) de-embedding method of differential low noise amplifier (LNA). The characterization of NF was set up and referred as multi-stage network. The Friis law was applied to improve from the noise contributions from the subsequent stages. The correlated differential NF is accurately obtained after de-embedding the noise contribution from the interconnections and external components. Details of equations and measurement procedure are reported in this work. A 2.4 GHz differential LNA was tested to demonstrate the feasibility of measurement and showed precise NF compared with other methods. The result shows an NF of 0.57 dB achieved using de-embedding method and 1.06 dB obtained without the de-embedding method. This is an improvement of 0.49 dB of NF measurement.