IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MICROWAVE THEORY AND TECHNIQUES, VOL. 54, NO.

4, APRIL 2006

1687

The Analysis of UWB SiGe HBT LNA for Its Noise,

Linearity, and Minimum Group Delay Variation
Yunseo Park, Student Member, IEEE, Chang-Ho Lee, Member, IEEE, John D. Cressler, Fellow, IEEE, and
Joy Laskar, Fellow, IEEE

AbstractThe design of ultra-wideband (UWB) low-noise

amplifiers (LNAs) require additional circuit design principles,
which differ from those used in conventional LNAs. The design of a low-dc-power-consumption SiGe HBT LNA covering
the 210-GHz range is demonstrated for UWB applications.
Important design factors that must be carefully considered for
UWB applications are analyzed, which include power dissipation,
operating bandwidth, noise figure, group delay variation, and
linearity. The dominant factor for low group delay variation in
UWB LNAs is identified through the theoretical analysis. The
linearity behavior over the wide bandwidth is analyzed and explained using the Volterra series. Second-harmonic cancellation is
determined to be the dominant degradation factor for linearity.
The implemented SiGe LNA achieves a gain of 13 dB, a minimum
noise figure of 3.3 dB, and an input third-order intercept point of
7.5 dBm between 210 GHz while consuming a dc power of only
9.6 mW. This SiGe UWB LNA exhibits less than 22 ps of uniform
group delay variation over the entire band.
Index TermsGroup delay variation, linearity, low-noise amplifier (LNA), noise figure, SiGe HBT, ultra-wideband (UWB),
Volterra series.

Traditional narrowband LNA designs use the cascode

topology along with the inductor degeneration to achieve a
good linearity and noise matching. However, this topology
is based on the cancellation of the reactance for a narrow
frequency range by using an inductor and is thus not suitable
for wideband operation.
Previously reported papers on the wideband LNA design utilized a Darlington pair [1], [7], filters for a wideband input
match [2], [5], noise cancellation technique [8], and distributed
amplifier [3]. Although these approaches can obtain the required
gain over the wide frequency range, their high dc power consumption is not satisfactory for most UWB applications.
In this paper, a traditional resistive feedback topology is revisited for the UWB LNA design. Critical design factors such as
noise figure, group delay variation, and linearity over the wide
frequency range are analyzed. As a result, we demonstrate the
design and implementation of a fully integrated UWB LNA with
a low noise figure of less than 3.3 dB and a low group delay variation of only 22 ps from 2 to 10 GHz, while consuming power
as low as 9.6 mW.

I. INTRODUCTION
HE ALLOWANCE of the FCC regarding frequencies between 310 GHz for ultra-wideband (UWB) applications
has led to an increased level of interest and scope of research
on this band and its various applications. The availability of
such high bandwidth would allow higher data throughput up to
500 Mb/s over short distances, which is desirable for high-definition television (HDTV) and other wireless multimedia applications. Apart from high data rates, the other compelling features of UWB would be potentially lower cost and higher level
of integrations.
Several different approaches have been proposed to establish a universal standard for such UWB applications [9], [10].
Whether it is a pulse-based system or a multiband orthogonal
frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) system, the basic requirement of the UWB transceiver is a wideband low-noise amplifier (LNA). The LNA needs to cover a wide range of frequencies from 3.1 to 10.6 GHz, along with exhibiting low noise
figure and low power consumption.

II. DESIGN CONSIDERATION FOR UWB LNA

There are several issues encountered in designing a wideband LNA. The amplifier should minimize the input power loss,
which is caused by mismatch from the antenna. Maintaining low
noise figure over the wide bandwidth is another major concern.
Wideband LNAs tend to have an extraordinarily high power dissipation compared with other LNAs at a similar noise performance [1][5]. The high power consumption is due to its broadband characteristics, and, hence, techniques which reduce the
power consumption through LC tuning are not applicable [17].
Linearity cannot be ignored in the design although its specification is rather relaxed compared to that of the conventional narrowband LNA applications. Since the frequency component of
the transmitted signal should experience the same delay amount
to be recovered properly, the group delay variation in the RF
front-end should be minimized.

III. INPUT MATCH AND NOISE ANALYSIS

Manuscript received August 1, 2005; revised January 10, 2006. This work was
supported in part by the Georgia Electronic Design Center, Georgia Institute of
Technology and by IBM.
The authors are with the Georgia Electronic Design Center, Georgia Institute
of Technology, Atlanta, GA 30332-0250 USA (e-mail: gte682q@mail.gatech.
edu; libra73@ece.gatech.edu).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TMTT.2006.872000

A. Input Power Match

A resistive-feedback LNA is shown in Fig. 1. For a UWB
system, the input loss should be minimized over a very wide
bandwidth. A resistive feedback can have a reasonably good

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The primary RF noise sources in a bipolar transistor are the

, the collector-current shot noise
base-current shot noise
, the base resistance-induced thermal noise
, and the
feedback resistance-induced thermal noise
. From the
small-signal noise model of Fig. 2, an expression for the minimum NF can be derived as follows:

(3)
where

(4)

Fig. 1. Resistive-feedback LNA.

input power match due to the fact that its input impedance is
mainly set by frequency invariant terms, given as

(1)
The small-signal transconductance
is a frequency-invariant term. Thus, the overall input impedance is set by the
term. As
is usually a resistor, the input
matching for maximum power transfer can be achieved over a
very wide frequency range. However, the feedback resistance
controls input impedance as well as a 3-dB bandwidth
and noise performance, thus requiring careful optimization of
its value to achieve low noise performance with a wideband
operating frequency range.
B. Noise Figure
The UWB specification requires the RF front-end to cover
frequencies from 3 to 10 GHz with a low noise figure and high
gain for a low dc power dissipation. Even though the resistive
feedback is generally known for its degradation in gain and
noise performance in tradeoff for the extended operating bandwidth, further analysis is required to facilitate for optimal design
(2)
The noise factor can be expressed in terms of
and the
source admittance [16]. The noise performance of an amplifier
is determined mainly by its minimum noise factor and noise
contribution that occurs when input source admittance is different from its optimum admittance. Due to its wideband inputmatching characteristics of a resistive feedback, noise contribution from the second term in (2) can be made small compared
, and low noise performance over a wide bandwidth can
to
.
be achieved by minimizing
The small-signal noise model of the resistive feedback SiGe
amplifier is shown in Fig. 2, where is the base resistance due
to current crowding effect,
is the baseemitter junction cais basecollector juncpacitance, diffusion capacitance is
and
are load and feedback impedtion capacitance, and,
ances, respectively.

More detailed derivation for noise is illustrated in Appendix A.

From (3), we can see that the minimum NF increases with
term. In addition, a reduction
collector current through the
in baseemitter capacitance and basecollector capacitance improves the minimum NF because the reduction in both capaciof the device. By increasing current gain
tances increase the
, the minimum NF can be reduced as well. The base resistance
typically plays an important role in determining the noise
figure of conventional LNA design. Choosing a proper device
geometry can strongly impact the design of wideband LNAs.
Overall, the minimum NF decreases as the value of the feedback
resistor increases, which is related to the operating bandwidth in
this design. Thus, there is an inherent tradeoff in the operating
bandwidth and noise performance in wideband resistive-feedback LNA design.
The minimum NF increases as the frequency increases. In (3),
the two terms inside the second square root become equal at a
specific frequency, which defines a transition of the minimum
NF from a white noise behavior to a 10-dB/decade increase as
the frequency increases. That transition frequency is defined as

(5)
As
increases, the frequency that defines a transition from
a white noise behavior to a 10-dB/decade increase of minimum
is 100 GHz
NF also increases. Suppose, for instance, that
and is 200: the transition occurs around 7 GHz without the
resistive feedback from (5). The transition frequency can be
increases. However, the reasonable transition
increased as
frequency is around 10 GHz for our purposes, considering
operating bandwidth and noise performance for a given bias
condition.
As derived in Appendix A, the expression of optimum source
susceptance for the low noise matching is
(6)
(7)
where

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Fig. 2. Small-signal noise model of a resistive-feedback SiGe HBT amplifier.

(8)
Therefore, the required inductance
is

for low noise matching

(9)
A resistive feedback reduces the optimum source susceptance
and, thus, increases the required input inductance for
noise matching compared to the case without the feedback or
the case with inductor degeneration, which is dominantly used
in conventional narrowband LNA design.
One advantage of noise matching at the high frequency is that
it can reduce the required input inductance. By matching noise
at the high-end frequency, this small increase in inductance can
be compensated and the required input inductance can be reduced. As a result, the overall noise performance can be improved because a high-quality inductor can be used. Therefore,
input noise matching at the high-end frequency will ensure the
low noise performance of the amplifier over a wide bandwidth.

IV. GROUP-DELAY-VARIATION ANALYSIS

A small group delay variation is desirable because this implies that all frequencies will be delayed relatively the same
amount while passing through the amplifier. If the various frequencies are not delayed equally, dispersion results, and the
output does not retain its identity [11]. These effects are severe in the case of applied pulsed input signals, which have distributed power over a wide bandwidth.
Group delay variations are considered in high-speed wireline equalizer design, which also are required to operate over
a wide bandwidth. However, the design consideration between
the high-speed equalizer and the UWB applications is quite
different because the former contains the main signal energy
around the dc region while the latter actually spread the signal
energy over the entire band.

Fig. 3. Small-signal model of resistive-feedback LNA for the analysis of group

delay variation.

A. Group Delay Variation

Basically, the group delay is the derivative of the phase of the
with
, we
transfer function. For a transfer function
have

(10)
where
and
are the gain and the phase components
of the transfer function, respectively.
Phase delay and group delay are expressed as follows:
Phase delay

(11)

Group delay

(12)

Basically, the phase delay represents the absolute delay and,

thus, is of little significance. However, the group delay is used as
the criterion to evaluate phase nonlinearity. Since the expression
for group delay can be derived from the small-signal transfer
function, we will first consider the model shown in Fig. 3

(13)

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Fig. 4. Simplification of the input part of a resistive-feedback amplifier.

where
Fig. 5. Effect of the input inductance on the group delay variation.

(14)

delay variation depends on

(16) is derived as

and

[12]. The group delay of

(15)
for the given circuit is expressed
The small-signal gain
in (13). The equation can be divided into two parts. One is the
from input
to point , and
voltage transfer function
from point to point . Intuthe other is the gain term
itively, since group delay is the derivative of the phase of the
transfer function, any resonance in the signal path will contribute distortion in the group delay. For CMOS design, delay
and
should be considered beperformance both in
cause of its relatively high parasitic capacitance in the drain.
However, the SiGe HBT has quite small parasitics in the colcan be negligible
lector, and the delay contribution from
as long as the inductance peaking with the parasitic capacitances
occurs out of the operating bandwidth. The main contribution
comes from the Miller effect. Because the input capacitance becomes large due to the Miller effect, it can resonate with the
input inductance. Therefore, the critical part for group delay
, and the input can be approximated
variation comes from
as in Fig. 4 as

The equation indicates that, at the

frequency, if
is
bigger than 0.577, then the denominator of (19) has two poles
in the imaginary part, which results in the group delay peaking
[12]. Therefore, group delay variation can be minimized either
or decreasing
below 0.577.
by increasing
From (16), we have

(16)

Since basically and are related to the amount of feedback,

which is the main factor in determining the operating bandwidth, the best way to minimize the group delay variation is to
as much as possible, thus moving the
reduce the value of
term out of the required bandwidth. The effect is shown in
Fig. 5 through simulation. Fig. 5 shows that the increases of
result in the increases of group delay variation because
falls
into the operating bands. Therefore, the base inductance plays
an important role in minimizing group delay variation.

where
(17)
(18)

(19)

(20)
(21)

B. Optimum Load Impedance

The transfer function of
can be approximated as in
. The equation is similar to that of
(16). Suppose
a second-order low-pass filter transfer function, whose group

For the low-power design, the device is mainly biased at its

best noise performance. Therefore, it might not achieve the required bandwidth or the gain flatness in the bandwidth. Induc-

PARK et al.: ANALYSIS OF UWB SiGe HBT LNA FOR NOISE, LINEARITY, AND MINIMUM GROUP DELAY VARIATION

tive load is quite helpful since it can boost the gain as the frequency increases while the intrinsic gain of the device decreases
as the frequency increases. The concern of the load inductance is
that it can distort the group delay variation, as discussed in [4].
As can be seen in (20), the load impedance also affects the
group delay variation by reducing . Therefore, the maximum
value of the load impedance which can minimize the group
delay variation exists.
In order to make sure of the flat group delay variation, the folis high-end frequency, which
lowing equation holds, where
is 10 GHz in UWB applications:

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Fig. 6. Nonlinear equivalent model of the resistive-feedback SiGe HBT LNA

for low dc current.

(22)
is related to the load inductance
as in (17), we
Since
can obtain the following expression by solving (22):

(23)
In the design,
is set mainly for linearity in the SiGe device
is set, then the value of
considering its bias current. Once
load inductor can be determined using (23), which guarantees
low group delay variation over the entire bandwidth.
The calculated value from (23) can be used as an initial value
for the design. Since the delay variation not only depends on
but also
, the calculated value for load inductance can be
is less than 0.577.
increased as long as
V. LINEARITY ANALYSIS
Linearity behavior in the wideband is different from conversional narrow band circuit design. In narrowband applications,
the receiving bands are usually selected by a preselect filter,
eliminating high interferers from other applications. Therefore,
their linearity considers only their input 1-dB compression
point (P1dB) and input third-order intercept point (IIP3), which
cannot be removed by preselect filter.
The challenge in the UWB system is that the frequency band
allowed for system overlaps from other existing applications,
which are possibly near the range of the UWB system. The
major interference would come from 802.11a, for instance,
since it shares its frequency bands with the UWB bands. Even
though the transmitted and received signal strength is very low
compared to the conventional narrowband system, the linearity
of the LNA cannot be ignored since there is virtually no control
over the high interferers such as from 802.11a, which might
cause the RF front-end of the UWB system to saturate.
Generally, the linearity improves as current consumption increases. Because the power consumption of the LNA should be
minimized for UWB applications, there is a motivation to analyze the design concerning its linearity performance with low
power consumption.
Volterra-series analysis is performed on the LNA to gain an
insight into its linearity behavior in wide bandwidth. In this analysis, it is assumed that the input signal is very weak such that

Fig. 7. Simulated IMD3 performance from Volterra-series analysis.

the and nonlinearities of the order higher than three

are negligible, which is typical for LNAs because they operate
far below their 1-dB compression point [15].
Fig. 6 shows the nonlinear model of SiGe LNA used to derive the Volterra-series equation of resistive-feedback circuit in
is the diffusion capacitance, which is
Fig. 1. In this model,
proportional to the collector current and the forward transit time
.
is the baseemitter junction capacitance. The main factors that affect the nonlinearity of the SiGe LNA under the low
dc bias condition can be categorized into two: nonlinearity
and nonlinearity [13]. In nonlinearity, base current
and collector current are controlled by the nonlinear func. In nonlinearity,
is
tion of the control voltage
the strong function of
when the diffusion capacitance dominates because diffusion charge is proportional to .
The nonlinear output current with Volterra series when the
is applied is as follows [15]:
input voltage

(24)
is the th power of the voltage source signal and
where
is the Volterra-series coefficient, which is a linear function of
number of frequencies. The operator o indicates that each
is changed by the magnitude and
frequency component of
[15].
phase of
The analysis is performed on the resistive-feedback LNA
shown in Fig. 1 with the device size of 0.2 m 15 m, and the

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Fig. 8. (a) Circuit schematic of the implemented UWB LNA on SiGe BiCMOS process. (b) Chip photograph of the UWB LNA.

expression for third-order intermodulation distortion IMD

derived as

is

IMD

(25)
The details of procedure to derive a Volterra-series equation can
be found in [13][15].
For its wideband linearity behavior, the expression of IMD
can be divided into the three parts. is related to the overall
linearity performance over the operating bandwidth, which
mainly can be improved by consuming large amount of current.
shows that IMD can be reduced by canceling
with ,
and base inductance
.
which includes source impedance
At low frequency, the cancellation effect is negligible. However,
the amount of cancellation increases as the frequency increases
and, therefore, the IMD performance generally improves with
also suggests that the feedback resistance and
frequency.
load impedance should be as large as possible to minimize
IMD .
Since the load impedance is related to the group delay variation in this design, the value of the load inductor can be maximized as long as its degradation in group delay variation is
negligible.
determines its wideband linearity behavior. It can be defined as a multiplication factor because its value, which is less

than one, is multiplied by the previous and . While the IMD

improves along with frequency according to and , suggests that there is peak degradation in linearity due to cancellation from its second-harmonic terms. The effect is shown in
Fig. 7, which shows the simulated IMD3 performance for the
model shown in Fig. 6 with the device size of 0.2 m 15 m.
Because the LNA has gain from 3 to 10 GHz, the contribution
in
differs between 35 and 510 GHz.
from
The first lower band benefits from the cancellation in while
the higher band suffers from small cancellation caused by small
at high frequencies, which is contrary to the case
in .
Also, the cancellation in
cannot be ignored
due to its high-frequency term. In the design,
cancel out 1, thus creating a peak degradation in the bandwidth. The frequency at which peak degradation in linearity
occurs can be expected by using the following equation:

(26)
Note that (26) shows that the frequency where the maximum
degradation occurs for its linearity performance is related to the
base inductance as well. Since the base inductance is related to
the noise and group delay performance of the LNA, the peak
degradation in linearity cannot be avoided for the UWB applications. However, by predicting its maximum degradation frequency in linearity, we might be able to move the frequency
point to the unused frequency bands as discussed in [9] and [10].
For the UWB LNA design, this peak degradation should be considered, and the linearity specification must be satisfied.
VI. CIRCUIT DESIGN
The base resistance is the main factor that increases
of the device, and it is related to the emitter width. The device
with smaller emitter width reduces
especially at high

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1693

Fig. 11. Measured and simulated noise figure and group delay of the LNA.
Fig. 9. Measured and simulated S 21 and S 11 of the LNA.

Fig. 12. Measured IIP3 and ICP of the LNA over the frequency range.
Fig. 10. Measured and simulated S 12 and S 22 of the LNA.

frequencies. The emitter length does not affect the achievable

, however, it is related to the input matching and the linearity performance of the LNA. The minimum noise figure is
proportional to frequency and the amount of feedback. An SiGe
and high
improves the
HBT that has low
.
gain and the
determines the operating
The choice of feedback resistor
bandwidth and minimum noise figure of the amplifier. Low
increases the operating bandwidth with the sacrifice of the gain
should be chosen as high as
and noise performance. Thus,
possible up to where it can meet the bandwidth requirement.
To reduce dc power consumption and increase gain and noise
performance, the RF is selected where it can barely meet the
bandwidth requirement, and the remainder of the bandwidth is
covered by boosting its gain in high frequencies. By incorporating a load inductor, the flat gain over the wideband can be
achieved. From the point of view of gain flatness over the bandwidth, the load inductance should be increased as long as it does
not degrade the group delay variation.
Although a device with a small emitter width and a large
emitter length can improve the gain and noise performance,
it lacks in good linearity. The drawback in terms of linearity
could be overcome by either increasing the dc bias current or
by trading off the noise performance by using a device of rather

Fig. 13. Measured IIP3 of the LNA at 7 GHz.

large size. The linearity can be improved by choosing a device

with a large junction capacitance, which contributes to the cancellation of IMDs, as seen in (25). Taking into considerations all
these factors, the emitter width of 0.2 m and length of 15 m
is chosen for the LNA device in Fig. 8(a).
Noise matching is performed around 10 GHz. A resistive
feedback increases the value of inductor for noise matching. By
performing the noise matching at the high end of the frequency

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TABLE I
COMPARISON WITH PREVIOUS PUBLISHED WORKS

band, not only does the value of the inductor decrease but the
noise figure within the operating bands decreases because maximum noise figure would be at the high-end frequency.
Because the quality factor of the noise-matching inductor affects the overall noise performance, a transmission-line inductor
of 0.66 nH with a of 20 is used in the implementation.
is selected to achieve a best IIP3 perforLoad resistance
performs an important role in determining IIP3 of
mance.
can be calculated using bias
the device itself. The value of
current and supply voltage to bias the device at its high toleris determined, the value
ance point to the distortion. Once
of the load inductor that has a minimal effect on the group delay
variation is obtained.

VII. MEASURED RESULTS

The designed UWB LNA is fabricated in IBM 0.18 m
SiGe BiCMOS process. The size of the fabricated IC is
0.8 mm . The input and output ports are matched to the
1.1
50- without using any buffer amplifier. The design is optimized to use the proper value of passive devices considering
their self-resonating frequencies (SRFs) for operation up to
10 GHz.
The initial measurements for this design were reported in
[30].
The measured and simulated -parameters are plotted in
Figs. 9 and 10. The measurements show a gain of 13 dB with
a 3-dB bandwidth of 10 GHz. Reverse isolation is better than
23 dB over the entire band. An input return loss of 7 dB at
3 GHz is achieved, which improves up to 24 dB at 10 GHz for
simultaneous noise and power matching. The measured output
return loss is less than 10 dB over the entire band.
The measured and simulated noise figures are shown in
Fig. 11. The noise figure of the LNA is between 2.93.3 dB
from 2 to 10 GHz. Uniform group delay variation of around
22 ps is achieved for the entire UWB band, as shown in Fig. 11.
Two-tone measurements are performed at 3, 5, 7, and 10 GHz
with 200-MHz spacing to measure the linearity of the amplifier
over the entire band. The measured ICP and IIP3 at 3 GHz are
14.5 and 6.5 dBm, respectively.

The linearity is degraded around 7 GHz, as was expected from

(25) in Volterra-series analysis. An IIP3 of 5 dBm and input
P1dB of 14 dBm are measured at 10 GHz.
The measured IIP3 and ICP performance of the LNA over
the UWB frequency range is shown in Fig. 12. Fig. 13 shows
the measured IIP3 performance at around 7 GHz.
The fabricated UWB LNA consumes 4 mA from a 2.4-V
power supply. When the current is reduced to 3 mA, the 3-dB
bandwidth remains the same but the gain is reduced to 11.5 dB
with a 3.5-dB NF at 10 GHz. Since the design is optimized for
the low noise performance, the NF is not degraded much with
a reduced gain. The performance of the implemented LNA is
compared with previously published works in Table I.
As shown in Table I, the designed LNA achieves low noise
figure of 3.5 dB while simultaneously consuming the lowest
(7.2 mW) yet published in a commercial SiGe BiCMOS
process.
VIII. CONCLUSION
We have analyzed the key performance factors required for
UWB LNA design, such as noise performance, group delay variation, and linearity over a wide bandwidth. Through the analysis, we determined that a low base inductance was beneficial to
achieve low group delay variation while maintaining low-noise
performance. Volterra-series analysis was performed to obtain
an insight into the linearity behavior over the wide frequency
range.
The fully integrated UWB LNA is implemented and fabricated in a commercial SiGe BiCMOS process. The design utilizes resistive feedback to achieve a flat gain and low noise figure
over the entire band while consuming low dc power. The measured performance of the UWB LNA shows a low noise figure
of 3.3 dB and low group delay variation of 22 ps with compatible linearity performance over the entire UWB band while
consuming total power as low as 9.6 mW.
APPENDIX A
Using linear two-port noise theory, we can convert the noise
model in Fig. 2 into an equivalent input noise current generator
and an input voltage noise generator,
with a noiseless
two-port model [18].

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The corresponding power spectral densities (PSDs) are defined by

Suppose that
as (3).

1695

, then

can be expressed

APPENDIX B
(27)

From (24),
,
pressed as follows [16]:

, and

can be ex-

(28)
and
are the Fourier transforms for noise
where
voltage and current defined by [18]
Using the -parameter equation described in [13], The ex,
can be derived as follows.
pression for
Supposing that
, we have

(36)
(37)

(38)
(29)
(30)

Using a technique known as compact modified nodal analysis

,
, and
can be ob(CMNA) [13],
tained as follows ( is ignored because its effect is negligible):

(31)
where
,
, and
From the above equations, we can derive following equations:

(39)
(40)
(41)

(32)
(42)

(34)
and (33), shown at the bottom of this page. Using (32) and (33),
is expressed as (35), shown at the bottom of this page.

(43)

(33)

(35)

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where

and

(44)

(45)
By substituting (42)(45) into (36)(38), we obtain the following equations:

(46)

(47)

(48)

(49)

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank A. Joseph, D. Harame,
D. Herman, J. Dunn, B. Meyerson, and the IBM SiGe team for
their contributions.
REFERENCES
[1] J. Lee and J. D. Cressler, A 310 GHz SiGe resistive feedback
low noise amplifier for UWB applications, in IEEE RFIC Dig., pp.
545548.

[2] A. Ismail and A. Abidi, A 3 to 10 GHz LNA using a wideband

LC-ladder matching network, in ISSCC Dig. Tech. Papers, Feb. 2004,
pp. 382383.
[3] R. C. Liu et al., Design and analysis of DC-to-14 GHz and 22 GHz
CMOS cascade distributed amplifier, IEEE J. Solid-State Circuits, vol.
39, no. 8, pp. 13701374, Aug. 2004.
[4] H. Knapp et al., 15 GHz wideband amplifier with 2.8dB noise figure
in SiGe bipolar technology, in IEEE RFIC Dig., pp. 287290.
[5] A. Bevilacqua and A. Niknejad, An ultra-wideband CMOS LNA for
3.1 to 10.6 GHz wireless receivers, in ISSCC Dig. Tech. Papers, Feb.
2004, pp. 384385.
[6] N. Shiramizu et al., A 310 GHz bandwidth low-noise and low-power
amplifier for fullband UWB communications in 0.25-um SiGe
BiCMOS technology, in IEEE RFIC Dig., pp. 3942.
[7] K. W. Kobayashi and A. K. Oki, A DC-10 GHz high gain low noise
GaAs HBT direct coupled amplifier, IEEE Microw. Guided Wave
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PARK et al.: ANALYSIS OF UWB SiGe HBT LNA FOR NOISE, LINEARITY, AND MINIMUM GROUP DELAY VARIATION

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Symp. Dig., Jun. 2005, pp. 10411044.

Yunseo Park (S99) received the B.S. degree from

Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea, in 1999, the M.S.
degree from the Georgia Institute of Technology
(Georgia Tech), Atlanta, in 2000, and is currently
working toward the Ph.D. degree at Georgia Tech.
He is currently with the Microwave Applications
Group (MAG), Georgia Tech. His research interests
LO signal generation design and front-end design
of direct conversion receiver for ultra-wideband and
multiband applications in CMOS and SiGe BiCMOS
processes.

Chang-Ho Lee (M01) received the B.S. and M.S.

degree in electrical engineering from Korea University, Seoul, Korea, in 1989 and 1991, respectively,
and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical and computer engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech), Atlanta, in 1999 and 2001,
respectively.
He was a Research Engineer with Dacom Corporations, Korea, from 1994 to 1996. In 2000, he joined
RF Solutions Inc., Norcross, GA, where he was a
Staff Engineer. Since 2003, he has been a Member
of the Research Faculty with Georgia Tech. His research interest includes satellite/wireless communication system design and design/characterization of the
transceiver RFICs in GaAs devices and Si-based CMOS/SiGe HBT processes,
as well as LTCC/MLO-based multilayer multichip modules development for
wireless communication applications. His current research is related to the
low-power reconfigurable front-end design for cognitive radio applications.

John D. Cressler (S86A91SM91F01) received the B.S. degree in physics from the Georgia
Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech), Atlanta, in
1984, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in applied
physics from Columbia University, New York, in
1987 and 1990, respectively.
From 1984 to 1992, he was a Member of the
Research Staff with the IBM Thomas J. Watson
Research Center, Yorktown Heights, NY, and from
1992 to 2002 on the faculty at Auburn University, Auburn, AL. In 2002, he joined the faculty
at Georgia Tech, where he is currently the Byers Professor of Electrical
and Computer Engineering. His research interests include: SiGe/strained
Si devices and technology, mixed-signal circuits built from such devices,
radiation effects, cryogenic electronics, device-to-circuit interactions, reliability physics, device-level simulation, and compact circuit modeling. He has
authored or coauthored over 300 papers related to his research. He coauthored
Silicon-Germanium Heterojunction Bipolar Transistors (Artech House, 2003),
authored Reinventing Teenagers: The Gentle Art of Instilling Character in Our
Young People (Xlibris, 2004), and edited Silicon Heterostructure Handbook:
Materials, Fabrication, Devices, Circuits, and Applications of SiGe and Si
Strained-Layer Epitaxy (CRC, 2005).
Dr. Cressler was an Associate Editor for the IEEE JOURNAL OF SOLID-STATE
CIRCUITS (19982001), the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON NUCLEAR SCIENCE
(20022005), and currently for the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ELECTRON
DEVICES. He has served on the Technical Program Committees of the IEEE
International Solid-State Circuits Conference (19921998, 19992001),
the IEEE Bipolar/BiCMOS Circuits and Technology Meeting (19951999,

1697

2005present), the IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting (19961997),

the IEEE International Solid-State Device Research Conference (2003, 2005),
the IEEE Nuclear and Space Radiation Effects Conference (2000, 20022005),
and the IEEE International Reliability Physics Symposium (2005). He was the
Technical Program Chair of the 1998 IEEE International Solid-State Circuits
Conference (ISSCC), and the Conference Co-chair of the 2004 IEEE Topical
Meeting on Silicon Monolithic Integrated Circuits in RF Systems. He currently
serves on the Executive Steering Committee for the IEEE Topical Meeting on
Silicon Monolithic Integrated Circuits in RF Systems, as International Advisor
for the IEEE European Workshop on Low-Temperature Electronics, on the
Technical Program Committee for the IEEE International SiGe Technology and
Device Meeting, and on the Executive Committee of the ECS Symposium on
SiGe: Materials, Processing, and Devices. He has served as an IEEE Electron
Device Society Distinguished Lecturer since 1994 and was the recipient of the
1994 Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award for his SiGe research
program, the 1996 C. Holmes MacDonald National Outstanding Teacher Award
by Eta Kappa Nu, the 1996 Auburn University Alumni Engineering Council
Research Award, the 1998 Auburn University Birdsong Merit Teaching Award,
the 1999 Auburn University Alumni Undergraduate Teaching Excellence
Award, and an IEEE Third Millennium Medal in 2000. He was elected IEEE
Fellow in 2001 for contributions to the understanding and optimization of
silicon and silicon-germanium bipolar transistors.

Joy Laskar (S84M85SM02F05) received the

B.S. degree (highest honors) in computer engineering
with math/physics minors from Clemson University,
Clemson, SC, in 1985, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the University
of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, in 1989 and 1991,
respectively.
Prior to joining the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, in 1995, he held faculty positions
with the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
and the University of Hawaii. At the Georgia Institute of Technology, he holds the Joseph M. Pettit Professorship of Electronics
and is currently the Chair for the Electronic Design and Applications Technical
Interest Group, the Director of Georgias Electronic Design Center, and the
System Research Leader for the National Science Foundation (NSF) Packaging Research Center. With the Georgia Institute of Technology, he heads a
research group with a focus on integration of high-frequency electronics with
opto-electronics and integration of mixed technologies for next-generation
wireless and opto-electronic systems. In July 2001, he became the Joseph M.
Pettit Professor of Electronics with the School of Electrical and Computer
Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology. He has authored or coauthored
over 210 papers. He has ten patents pending. His research has focused on
high-frequency integrated-circuit (IC) design and their integration. His research has produced numerous patents and transfer of technology to industry.
Most recently, his research has resulted in the formation of two companies.
In 1998, he cofounded the advanced wireless local area network (WLAN) IC
company RF Solutions, which is now part of Anadigics. In 2001, he cofounded
the next-generation interconnect company Quellan Inc., Atlanta, GA, which
develops collaborative signal-processing solutions for enterprise applications.
Dr. Laskar has presented numerous invited talks. For the 20042006 term, he
has been appointed an IEEE Distinguished Microwave Lecturer for his Recent
Advances in High Performance Communication Modules and Circuits seminar.
He was a recipient of the 1995 Army Research Offices Young Investigator
Award, 1996 recipient of the National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER
Award, 1997 NSF Packaging Research Center Faculty of the Year, 1998 NSF
Packaging Research Center Educator of the Year, 1999 corecipient of the IEEE
Rappaport Award (Best IEEE Electron Devices Society journal paper), the
faculty advisor for the 2000 IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Society
(IEEE MTT-S) International Microwave Symposium (IMS) Best Student Paper
Award, 2001 Georgia Institute of Technology Faculty Graduate Student Mentor
of the Year, a 2002 IBM Faculty Award, 2003 Clemson University College of
Engineering Outstanding Young Alumni Award, and 2003 Outstanding Young
Engineer of the IEEE MTT-S.