A V-Band Common-Source Low Noise Amplifier in a 0.13 μm RF CMOS Technology and the Effect of Dummy Fills : Fundamentals and Applications of Advanced Semiconductor Devices

In this work, a V-band low noise amplifier (LNA) is developed in a commercial 0.13μm RFCMOS technology. Common-source (CS) topology, known to show a better noise performance than the cascode topology, was adopted and 4-stage was employed to achieve a sufficient gain at the target frequency near the cutoff frequency fT. The measured gain was 18.6dB with VDD = 1.2V and increased up to 20.2dB with VDD = 1.8 V at 66 GHz. The measured NF showed a minimum value of 7.0 dB at 62 GHz. DC power consumption was 24 mW with VDD = 1.2 V. The size of the fabricated circuit is as compact as 0.45 mm x 0.69 mm. This work was further extended to investigate the effect of dummy fills on LNA performance. An identical LNA, except for the dummy fills formed very close to (and under) the metal lines of spiral inductors and interconnects, was also fabricated and compared with the standard LNA. A peak gain degradation of 3.6 dB and average NF degradation of 1.3 dB were observed, which can be ascribed to the increased mismatch and line loss due to the dummy fills.