Low noise fully single-ended broadband receiver front-end with InGaAs pHEMT technology

This paper demonstrates a fully single-ended broadband receiver front-end using a 0.5μm InGaAs E-mode pHEMT technology. The receiver consists of a wideband low-noise amplifier (LNA) and a wideband mixer with active baluns. A modified Kukielka LNA with the added LC-ladder matching network for bandwidth extension and noise optimization is employed. A new switched transconductor mixer embedded with an active balun for the local oscillator (LO) signal is designed. Measured results show that the front-end can achieve conversion gain of 26-29 dB, double sideband noise figure of 2.6-4.4 dB over the entire frequency range of 0.7 to 5.2 GHz. Based on the proposed front-end, an image-reject receiver is also presented with an image rejection of 35 dBc within the bandwidth.

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