A 5-GHz fully integrated ESD-protected low-noise amplifier in 90-nm RF CMOS

A fully integrated 5-GHz low-power ESD-protected low-noise amplifier (LNA), designed and fabricated in a 90-nm RF CMOS technology, is presented. This 9.7-mW LNA features a 13.3-dB power gain at 5.5 GHz with a noise figure of 2.9 dB, while maintaining an input return loss of -14 dB. An on-chip inductor, added as "plug-and-play," i.e., without altering the original LNA design, is used as ESD protection for the RF pins to achieve sufficient ESD protection. The LNA has an ESD protection level up to 1.4 A transmission line pulse (TLP) current, corresponding to 2-kV Human Body Model (HBM) stress. Experimental results show that only minor RF performance degradation is observed by adding the inductor as a bi-directional ESD protection device to the reference LNA.