A low noise Ka-band amplifier for radio astronomy

Author

McCulloch, Malcolm ; Blackhurst, E. ; Davis, Ronald W. ; Galtress, A. ; George, Dani ; Melhuish, S. ; Piccirillo, L.

Author_Institution

Sch. of Phys. & Astron., Univ. of Manchester, Manchester, UK

fYear

2012

Firstpage

881

Lastpage

884

Abstract

We present the designs for and the results of a prototype cryogenic Ka-band low noise amplifier (LNA), that is based on the hybridization of microwave integrated circuits (MICs) and monolithic microwave integrated circuits (MMICs). The resulting transistor plus MMIC (T+MMIC) 5 stage LNA, has a peak gain of 52dB, a minimum noise temperature of 12K at an ambient temperature of ≈23K, and a 20% bandwidth of 27-33GHz. We outline the background behind the LNA, our measurement process, the LNA´s performance, our future development plans and discuss the possible advantages that this amplifier layout may offer.

Keywords

MMIC; low noise amplifiers; radioastronomy; LNA; T+MMIC; amplifier layout; frequency 27 GHz to 33 GHz; hybridization; microwave integrated circuits; monolithic microwave integrated circuits; prototype cryogenic Ka-band low noise amplifier; radio astronomy; temperature 12 K; transistor; Cryogenics; MMICs; Microwave transistors; Noise; Transistors; HEMTs; MMICs; Millimeter wave transistors; astronomy; indium phosphide; low-noise amplifiers; microwave integrated circuits;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Microwave Integrated Circuits Conference (EuMIC), 2012 7th European

Conference_Location

Amsterdam

Print_ISBN

978-1-4673-2302-4

Electronic_ISBN

978-2-87487-026-2

Type

conf

Filename

6483942