The Design and Performance Comparison of Wide Bandwidth LNA with Three Different Kinds of Technologies

A low noise amplifier (LNA) is the first active stage in a receiver, which plays a key role in the entire receiver. In this paper, LNAs with three different kinds of devices - enhancement mode (E-mode) Gallium Arsenide (GaAs) pseudomorphic high electron mobility transistor (PHEMT), depletion mode (D-mode) Gallium Nitride (GaN) high electron mobility transistor HEMT, and Silicon-On-Insulator (SOI) CMOS- are designed, simulated, analyzed and compared. For a fair comparison, the LNAs of the same circuit topology are built up with noiseless matching components, and their performances are compared in the terms of both important specifications and a universal Figure of Merits (FOM). The simulation results show that: the LNA with using E-mode GaAs PHEMT achieves the lowest noise figure (NF) of 0.51 dB while the SOI-CMOS gets the best FOM of among the three devices. To our limited knowledge, this paper is one of few attempts to compare devices' capabilities in building up wide bandwidth LNAs with resistor feedback networks.