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A K-band (18-26.5 GHz) RF-MEMS-enabled reconfigurable and multifunctional dual-path LNA hybrid circuit (optimised for lowest/highest possible noise figure/linearity, resp.) is presented, together with its subcircuit parts. The two MEMS-switched low-NF (higher gain) and high-linearity (lower gain) LNA circuits (paths) present 16.0 dB/8.2 dB, 2.8 dB/4.9 dB and 15 dBm/20 dBm of small-signal gain, noise figure, and 1 dB compression point at 24 GHz, respectively. Compared with the two (fixed) LNA subcircuits used within this design, the MEMS-switched LNA circuit functions show minimum 0.6-1.3 dB higher NF together with similar values of P 1 dB at 18-25 GHz. The gain of one LNA circuit path is reduced by 25-30 dB when the MEMS switch and active circuitry used within in the same switching branch are switched off to select the other LNA path and minimise power consumption.

This study presents the results of a high-gain and wideband differential intermediate frequency (IF) amplifier circuit design for a W-band passive imaging single-chip (down-conversion) receiver front-end. The cascaded two-stage IF amplifier was fabricated in a 0.13 μm SiGe BiCMOS process technology with 300 GHz/500 GHz f T /f max . In total six on-chip inductors are used in the input, output and inter-stage matching networks which enable relatively broadband RF properties together with a compact circuit size for the IF amplifier (the die area is 0.27 mm 2 incl. RF and DC pads). The broadband SiGe amplifier has a measured gain of 10-19.5 dB at 2-37 GHz (|s 11 | and |s 22 | ≤ −10 dB at 7-40 GHz and 8-35 GHz, respectively), noise figure of 6.3-8.0 dB at 2-26 GHz and output third order intercept points of 7-17 dBm at 1-40 GHz (the DC power consumption is 122 mW). To the authors' best knowledge, this work reports a first-time realisation of a differential IF amplifier made in a 0.13 μm SiGe BiCMOS technology that achieves such wideband impedance matching together with a high gain and reasonably low noise properties over a wide instantaneous bandwidth (|s 21 | = 15-19.5 dB at 3-26 GHz).

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