Received: 21 September 2021 Revised: 28 February 2022 Accepted: 4 April 2022
DOI: 10.1002/ett.4531
RESEARCH ARTICLE
Low noise amplifier design with enhanced noise and gain
performance using transformer boosting method for
millimeter-wave applications
Nitin Agarwal
1,2
Manish Gupta
1
Manish Kumar
1
1
Department of Electronics and
Communication Engineering, GLA
University, Mathura, India
2
Department of Electronics and
Communication Engineering, R.B.S
Engineering Technical Campus, Bichpuri,
India
Correspondence
Nitin Agarwal, Department of Electronics
and Communication Engineering, GLA
University, Mathura, Uttar Pradesh
281406, India.
Email: agarwal_nitin88@rediffmail.com
Abstract
In low noise amplifier (LNA) design, achieving minimum noise figure (NF) and
enhanced gain is equally important in the field of communication. The major
aim of this design with previous methods are those having implemented in the
topology of design like metal oxide semiconductor field effect transistor at com-
mon source connection topology, pole-based transformer boosting, and dual
feedback technique. However, these methods fail to reach the desired perfor-
mance due to their low NF and low gain. In order to overcome these failures
and their causes, this article presented a topology in LNA design using a trans-
former as boosting component to improve the performance of NF and gain for
millimeter-wave applications. It has three common gate stages connected in cas-
code form, and three transformers are acquired to link the drain to the input
signal. Transformers permit radio frequency feeding signal from drain to source,
and output from the previous stage is connected to the input of the next stage.
This connection increases the gain of the circuit and an enlarged coupling coef-
ficient of value “1,” which minimizes noise. The unilateral coefficient remains
to be 1, to make the circuit stable throughout execution. NF value can be min-
imized by properly selecting conductance coefficient and S-parameter values.
Since the transformer is used to provide feedback in this circuit, stability con-
dition has to be analyzed carefully. Output load value is selected optimum as it
creates an impact on the stability of LNA. This topology implemented in LNA
design helps to increase the gain by boosting the signal input, and hence, in
turn, it increases overall gain performance. Similarly, while executing this opti-
mal LNA design using transformer boosting technique in CADENCE software,
this LNA exhibits a minimum NF of 3 dB at 30 GHz and power gain of 12.2 dB
at 50GHz in measurement. Comparatively, the proposed LNA design overruns
conventional methods and consumes a power supply of 1.1 V.
1 INTRODUCTION
Applications in multimedia have increased the demand for data rates for wireless networks. Wireless communication
uses different modulation schemes quadrature phase shift keying (QPSK), orthogonal frequency modulation (OFDM),
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