HIGH-GAIN, V-BAND, LOW-NOISE MMIC AMPLIFIERS USING PSEUDOMORPHIC MODFETS

State-of-the-art, 60-GHz, low-noise MMIC’s based on pseudomorphic modulation-doped FET’s (P-MODFET’s), with 0.25-µm X 60-µm gates offset 0.3 µm from the source ohmic, have been developed. Single-stage low-noise amplifiers (LNA’s) exhibited minimum noise figures of 2.90 dB, with 4.1 dB of associated gain at 59.25 GHz. Duai-stage MMIC’s had minimum noise figures of 3.5 dB and 10.8 dB of associated gain at 58.50 GHz. Cascaded four-stage LNA’s (two dualstage MMIC’s) had minimum noise figures of 3.7 dB and over 20.7 dB of associated gain at 58.0 GHz. Finally, when biased for maximum gain, the four-stage amplifier exhibited over 30.4 dB of gain at 60.0 GHz. We believe that these results represent the best performance for any millimeter-wave low-noise MMIC reported to date. © 1990 IEEE