Cryogenic evaluation of a 30–50 GHz 0.15-μm MHEMT low noise amplifier for radio astronomy applications

摘要

Cryogenic evaluation of a 30–50 GHz 0.15-μm InGaAs metamorphic high electron mobility transistor (MHEMT) low noise amplifier (LNA) for radio astronomy applications is presented in this paper. For the on-wafer measurement, the LNA exhibits a bandwidth of 23 GHz with a small signal gain of 20.4 dB. For the cryogenic measurement, the LNA is further assembled in a packaged module. At a cryogenic temperature of 16 K, the best equivalent noise temperature is 23.4 K at 30.5 GHz. The proposed MHEMT LNA can be compared with the advanced InP-based LNAs, and has potential for the radio astronomy applications due to its broad bandwidth and low noise figure.