Design and Analysis for a 60-GHz Low-Noise Amplifier With RF ESD Protection

An RF electrostatic discharge (ESD) protection for millimeter-wave (MMW) regime applied to a 60-GHz low-noise amplifier (LNA) in mixed-signal and RF purpose 0.13-mum CMOS technology is demonstrated in this paper. The measured results show that this chip achieves a small signal gain of 20.4 dB and a noise figure (NF) of 8.7 dB at 60 GHz with 65-mW dc power consumption. Without ESD protection, the LNA exhibits a gain of 20.2 dB and an NF of 7.2 dB at 60 GHz. This ESD protection using an impedance isolation method to minimize the RF performance degradation sustains 6.5-kV voltage level of the human body model on the diode and 1.5 kV on the core circuit, which is much higher than that without ESD protection (< 350 V). To our knowledge, this is the first CMOS LNA with RF ESD protection in the MMW regime and has the highest operation frequency reported to date.