Proceedings of the 1st European Microwave Conference in Central Europe

GaN-on-SiC LNA for UHF and L-Band

Salahuddin Zafar#*1, Sinan Osmanoglu#*2, Busra Cankaya#*3, AhsanUllah Kashif†4, Ekmel Ozbay#*5
Nanotechnology Research Center (NANOTAM), Turkey
#

Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, I.D. Bilkent University, Turkey

*

†
Department of Electrical Engineering, IIUI, Pakistan
{1zafar, 2sinano, 3bcankaya}@ee.bilkent.edu.tr, [email protected], [email protected]

Abstract — In this paper, we report a broadband GaN HEMT although efforts are still undergoing for power amplification,
LNA from 100 MHz to 2 GHz, using common source with very little attention has been paid to GaN HEMT based LNA
inductive degeneration and RC feedback topology. Flat gain design. Some power amplifiers have recently been reported in
response of ±1.5 dB variation for 9 V drain voltage with 108 mA UHF and L-band for their applications in radar, nano-satellite
drain current bias is achieved. Noise characteristics for
GPS, space, tactical ground, and air communication as well as
frequencies as low as 100 MHz have been explored for the first
time for GaN-on-SiC technology. A gain greater than 8 dB with their potential use in commercial wireless and broadband public
single stage, and promising values of input reflection coefficient safety communication networks [4]–[8]. On the other hand,
(smaller than -8.9 dB) and output reflection coefficient (smaller there have been very few GaN based LNA designs covering
than -7.1 dB) have been achieved, respectively. Minimum NF of UHF and L-band in full or partially. A 0.2-8 GHz GaN MMIC
2.9 dB is achieved while an NF smaller than 5 dB is reported in the LNA-PA has been reported with characteristics of low noise as
usable frequency range from 310 MHz to 2 GHz. Performance well as power amplification. However, noise performance is
evaluation is also done for both low and high drain current and evaluated for frequencies greater than 1 GHz [9]. S. Piotrowicz
voltage values. In-house 0.15 µm GaN-on-SiC process is used to et al. presented a two-stage flat gain L-band robust LNA for
design this MMIC. The chip size for designed MMIC is 1.35 mm x
receiver front-end modules based on GaN technology [10]. Y.
1.35 mm.
Keywords — broadband, flat gain, low-noise amplifier, UHF, Yamaguchi demonstrated a broadband LNA from 600 MHz to
L-band, Gallium Nitride, HEMT, SiC 6 GHz using distributed amplifier configuration with active
gate termination, aiming to utilize the white space via frequency
I. INTRODUCTION sensing system [11]. In another attempt, LNA design simulated
GaN HEMT technology has emerged as a replacement of using Cree packaged transistor from 1 GHz to 6 GHz has been
GaAs for many applications. High Electron Mobility reported for WiMax applications [12].
Transistors (HEMTs) having high saturated drain current As discussed earlier, using the same GaN HEMT
density along with no intentional doping achieve very high technology for both transmit and receive sections is the need of
mobility of electrons in the channel. Moreover, GaN, being a the hour, and there is much room available to explore the
wideband semiconductor, has a high breakdown electric field. performance of LNAs in UHF and L-band. Therefore, we
Therefore, HEMTs based on GaN technology have the best focused our attention to design a broadband LNA from 100
combination of power handling capability and speed. The issue MHz to 2 GHz with a gain variation of less than ±1.5 dB in the
of low thermal conductivity of GaN material has already been band. LNA is designed using 0.15 µm GaN-on-SiC HEMT
improved by growing GaN epitaxial layers on SiC substrate to technology with RC feedback and source degeneration topology.
compensate for high power density and realize GaN RF power Common source (CS) topology, combined with series
transistors [1], [2]. degeneration inductor, provides good linearity and
The initial focus of research for GaN HEMT technology improvement in noise properties [3], [9]. As the CS topology
was power amplification for GaN HEMT technology, but it is has bandwidth-gain trade-off due to miller effect [13], RC
desirable to use the same technology for both transmit and feedback is used to achieve the stable broadband response.
receive MMICs to design low cost, compact, and efficient
II. FABRICATION AND DESIGN
single chip transceiver modules. GaN HEMTs not only provide
a comparable noise figure (NF) with GaAs and other InP based AlGaN/GaN HEMT on SiC process of Bilkent University
technologies, but also have built-in capability to handle high Nanotechnology Research Center (NANOTAM) is used for the
power at the receive end. Therefore, designing of GaN based design and fabrication of LNA MMIC. Active devices and
low noise amplifiers (LNAs) removes the need of a protection passive elements are fabricated on a 3-inch SiC substrate which
circuit at the input and simplifies the transceiver design [2], [3]. is grown by metal-organic chemical vapor deposition
A lot of research and efforts have been made to take the full (MOCVD). The fabrication starts with mesa isolation etching
advantage of GaN RF transistors by exploiting their power by plasma-based dry etch process. Ohmic contacts are formed
capabilities for power as well as low noise amplification. as Ti/Al/Ni/Au metal stacks using electron beam evaporation.
However, when it comes to the frequencies below S-band, Gates of active devices are deposited by electron beam

978-2-87487-067-5 © 2019 EuMA 95 13-15 May 2019, Prague, Czech Republic

lithography to achieve a T-shaped gate with 150 nm foot length. III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The sample is passivated with a SixNy layer using plasma- EM simulations resulted in flat gain response from 0.1 GHz
enhanced chemical vapor deposition. TaN thin film resistor to 2 GHz with a gain variation of ±1.3 dB and an NF less than
layer is deposited by sputtering to achieve 30 Ohms/□ 1.8 dB throughout the band. In the simulations, overall gain was
resistance. The process has two metallization layers. MIM greater than 9.5 dB while input reflection coefficient (IRC) and
capacitors have capacitance density of 250 pF/mm2. The air output reflection coefficient (ORC) were better than -8.3 dB and
bridge post structure is constituted between the metal layers. In -7.9 dB, respectively. Stability was achieved for all simulation
the back-side processing, SiC layer is thinned to 100 µm and range. Fig. 3 shows the measurement and simulation results
back-side via-holes are coated with Au to introduce ground where a good match is achieved for S-parameters from 0.1 GHz
layer. to 2 GHz. For the fabricated device, maximum gain of 11.3 dB
Fig. 1 shows the simplified schematic of our proposed is attained at 430 MHz and it remained above 8.4 dB from 100
broadband LNA. The size of designed MMIC is only 1.35 mm MHz to 2 GHz. Reflection coefficients are better than -8.9 dB
x 1.35 mm. It is packaged and then mounted on the PCB. The and -7.1 dB ensuring a good input and output matching,
photograph of fabricated MMIC along with its implementation respectively.
on PCB is shown in Fig. 2. Due to low frequency operation of
MMIC, large bias inductors for gate and drain (Ld and Lg) could
not be realized using the aforementioned process. Therefore,
packaged MMIC was mounted on a PCB to perform the
measurements by introducing external bias inductors. HEMT is
fabricated with series source degeneration to make the
modelling unerring. CS topology is used along with RC
feedback to achieve flat broadband response. This RC feedback
provides input and output matching as well as the stability with
stability network at the output. Electromagnetic (EM)
simulations were performed to observe the realistic results
before the fabrication.

Fig. 3. S-parameters measurement results of fabricated GaN-on-SiC MMIC at

bias of 9 V, 108 mA along with the simulation results

The simulated NF can be seen in Fig. 4, while the measured

NF is in Fig. 5. NF of less than 4 dB is achieved for frequencies
greater than 540 MHz . NF remains between 4 dB and 5 dB for
frequencies from 310 MHz to 540 MHz, while the lowest value
of NF is 2.9 dB at 1.95 GHz. These results show that the
designed MMIC is realized to have a usable bandwidth in UHF
range and L-band. This is for the first time, to the best of our
knowledge, that noise properties of broadband GaN LNA up to
2 GHz have been explored to as low as 100 MHz frequency.
Although the measurement results for NF are not in a perfect
match with the simulation results, the fabricated MMIC is still
considerable for RF front-end applications from 310 MHz to 2
GHz. The large bandwidth with an NF less than 5 dB using CS
topology has been reported for the first time for GaN LNAs, to
Fig. 1. Simplified schematic of GaN HEMT LNA the best of our knowledge.

Fig. 2. Photograph of designed MMIC and its implementation on a PCB Fig. 4. Noise figure simulation results of LNA MMIC

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 Two parameters need explanation in context to NF [3]. Gain variation of ±1.5 dB, achieved in this work, is the best
measurements. First point is that the deviation of results for the reported value for GaN-on-SiC LNAs in the frequency range
fabricated MMIC is due to the variations in the process, from 0.1 GHZ to 2 GHz. Moreover, this work has competitive
changing the transistor model slightly. Furthermore, the noise performance parameters in L-band having only one stage and
data used for design below 0.9 GHz was not directly from chip size as small as 1.35 mm x 1.35 mm, which increases to
measurements but from noise model developed by one of the 3.0 mm x 3.0 mm with the package.
authors (S.O.). Process variations caused different leakage
values compared to the used transistor model, and resulted with
higher NF for low frequencies. This situation ultimately makes
a room of improvement for the process parameters. Second
point is that some peaks are observed in the NF measurement
data which are due to the adjacent channel devices operating in
the same band and mobile communication bands.

Fig. 5. Measured noise figure of fabricated MMIC at bias of 9V, 108mA

Performance of the fabricated MMIC is tested for different

bias points and the results are summarized in Fig. 6. It has been
observed that the device performs better for higher bias current
in terms of IRC, gain, and NF. Performance results for ORC
and gain variation are better for low bias points. IRC better than
-8.5 dB and gain greater than 8.2 dB were achieved for bias
points of 9 V, 90 mA and 9 V, 108 mA. For 9 V, 45 mA, ORC
as low as -7.4 dB and gain variation of only ±1.3 dB are attained.
Noise figure less than 5 dB was measured from 330 MHz and
310 MHz to 2 GHz, for 9 V, 90 mA and 9 V, 108 mA,
respectively. The lowest value of NF of 2.9 dB at 1.9 GHz for
9 V, 90 mA was measured. The overall best noise performance
is achieved for 9 V, 108 mA. To conclude with, the device
performance for higher bias current proves to be promising with
a very little compromise over output match and gain variation.
Comparative analysis of our proposed LNA with already
published data is summarized in Table-1. As explained earlier,
there have not been many efforts to explore the broadband
response of GaN LNAs for frequencies as low as 100 MHz,
especially in terms of NF. Even the designs referred in Table-1
with broadband response in UHF range have reported NF above
500 MHz. Y. Yamaguchi et. al reported an NF less than 4 dB
from 0.6 GHz to 2 GHz with a decent gain of greater than 8 dB
[11]. Our design achieved the same NF for the frequency
starting from 540 MHz with the similar gain and better ORC.
We realized a compact chip size owing to single stage CS
topology instead of distributed amplifier or cascode design.
Although distributed amplifier topology provides the widest
Fig. 6. S-parameters and NF measurements data for different bias points from
bandwidth, CS topology is better in terms of noise performance 300 MHz to 2 GHz

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Table 1. Comparative analysis with recently published data (+Estimated values from figure, NA=Not Available, CS=Common Source, DA=Distributed Amplifier,
FB=Feedback)

Chip Size
Gain
S21 (mm
Ref. S11 (dB) S22 (dB) NF (dB) Variation Frequency Bias Process Technique
(dB) x
(dB)
mm)
CS with series
NA for f < 1 GHz, 0.2 – 2 GHz 0.2 µm AlGaN /
15 V, inductive source
[9] < -6+ < -10.5+ > 16.3 0.8–1.1+ for f = 1 – 2 ±1.85 (Actual up to GaN HEMT 1.7 x 1.7
400 mA FB and
GHz 8GHz) 50 µm X 24
RC FB
AlGaN / GaN
[10] 10 V, NA
< -12 < -12 > 22 < 1.7 ±0.15 1 – 2 GHz HEMT NA
220 mA (2-stage)
250 µm X 4
0.6 – 2 GHz DA (4-stage)
20 V, 0.25 µm AlGaN /
[11] < -10+ < -4+ > 8+ <4 ±3+ (Actual up to with active gate 3.0 x 3.4
248 mA GaN HEMT
6 GHz) termination
Simulation using
16 V,
[12] < -2.4 < -9.5 > 14 <3 ±1.7+ 1 – 6 GHz Cree Cascode NA
385 mA
CGH40006S
< 4 for f > 0.54 GHz CS with MMIC:
This 4–5 for 0.31–0.54 GHz 9 V, 108 0.15 µm AlGaN / inductive source 1.35 x 1.35
< -8.9 < -7.1 > 8.4 ±1.5 0.1 – 2 GHz
work 5–8.6 for 0.10.31 GHz mA GaN HEMT degeneration and Packaged:
Min.=2.9 @ 1.95 GHz RC FB 3.0 x 3.0

[6] L. Yuchao, Z. Shichang, and L. Wei, "Design of a Broadband GaN

IV. CONCLUSION Power Amplifier," 2018 International Conference on Microwave and
Millimeter Wave Technology (ICMMT), Chengdu, 2018, pp. 1-3.
A broadband common source LNA has been realized using [7] B. Dou, J. Yan, Y. Wu, L. Wang, C. Lv, and X. Wang, "High-
0.15 µm GaN HEMT technology. Flat gain of ±1.5 dB variation Performance and Low-Cost L-Band T/R Module for Space Application,"
and NF less than 5 dB with promising input and output 2018 International Conference on Microwave and Millimeter Wave
Technology (ICMMT), Chengdu, 2018, pp. 1-3.
reflection coefficient values provide the best ever reported [8] A. Raza and J. Gengler, "Design of a 70 W wideband GaN HEMT power
combination for CS GaN MMIC LNAs in the frequency band amplifier with 60% efficiency over 100–1000 MHz bandwidth," 2018
from 310 MHz to 2 GHz, to the best of our knowledge. IEEE Topical Conference on RF/Microwave Power Amplifiers for Radio
Moreover, noise properties being explored for the first time in and Wireless Applications (PAWR), Anaheim, CA, 2018, pp. 72-74.
[9] K. W. Kobayashi, Y. Chen, I. Smorchkova, R. Tsai, M. Wojtowicz, and
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ACKNOWLEDGMENT [10] S. Piotrowicz et al., "Broadband AlGaN/GaN high power amplifiers,
robust LNAs, and power switches in L-Band," 2009 European
The authors would like to acknowledge the efforts and Microwave Integrated Circuits Conference (EuMIC), Rome, 2009, pp.
workmanship of NANOTAM fabrication team for the device 431-434.
and MMIC fabrication. [11] Y. Yamaguchi, T. Kaho, M. Kawashima, H. Shiba, and T. Nakagawa,
"A wideband GaN low noise amplifier for a frequency sensing system,"
2014 Asia-Pacific Microwave Conference, Sendai, Japan, 2014, pp. 420-
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