Realization of a Low Noise Amplifier using 0.35 µm SiGe-BiCMOS Technology for IEEE 802.11a Applications

The trend demand for towards interactive multimedia services has forced the development of new wireless systems that has greater bandwidths. The evolution of current wireless communication systems has been very rapid. The main goal has been small-size and low-cost transceivers that can be designed for different applications. Data communication systems in compliant with IEEE 802.11a wireless local area network (WLAN) standard has found widespread use, meeting the market demands, for the last few years. Next generation WLAN operates in the 5-6 GHz frequency range. A front-end receiver capable of operating within this frequency range is essential to meet the current and future of products. One of the critical components, allowing the common use of the technology can be attributed to the high performance Low Noise Amplifiers (LNA) in the receiver chain of the 802.11a transceivers. In IEEE 802.11a, there are three frequency bands; 5.15GHz - 5.25GHz, 5.25GHz - 5.35GHz and 5.725GHz - 5.825GHz. In this thesis, we designed and fabricated a single-stage cascode amplifier with emitter inductive degeneration using 0.35 mm-SiGe BiCMOS process for IEEE 802.11a receivers. The electromagnetic (EM) simulations of the passive components are performed by using Agilent MOMENTUM® tool and all the parasitic components are extracted and compensated, a crucial step for optimizing the performance parameters of the LNA. The simulation results are very similar to measurement results, confirming the effectiveness of design methodology provided in this work