An wideband GaN low noise amplifier in a 3×3 mm² quad flat non-leaded package

An ultra-compact and wideband low noise amplifier (LNA) in a quad flat non-leaded (QFN) package is presented. The LNA monolithic microwave integrated circuit (MMIC) is implemented in a 0.25 μm GaN IC technology on a Silicon Carbide (SiC) substrate provided by Triquint. A source degeneration inductor and a gate inductor are used to obtain the noise and input matching simultaneously. The resistive feedback and inductor peaking techniques are employed to achieve a wideband characteristic. The LNA chip is mounted in the 3×3-mm² QFN package and measured. The supply voltages for the first and second stages are 14 V and 7 V, respectively, and the total current is 70 mA. The highest gain is 13.5 dB around the mid-band, and -3 dB frequencies are observed at 0.7 and 12 GHz. Input and output return losses (S₁₁ and S₂₂) of less than -10 dB measure from 1 to 12 GHz; there is an absolute bandwidth of 11 GHz and a fractional bandwidth of 169%. Across the bandwidth, the noise figures (NFs) are between 3 and 5 dB, while the output-referred third-order intercept points (OIP3s) are between 26 and 28 dBm. The overall chip size with all bonding pads is 1.1×0.9 mm² . To the best of our knowledge, this LNA shows the best figure-of-merit (FoM) compared with other published GaN LNAs with the same gate length.