Design of a D-Band CMOS Amplifier Utilizing Coupled Slow-Wave Coplanar Waveguides

This paper validates a design and modeling methodology of coupled slow-wave waveguides (CS-CPW) by presenting a D-band CMOS low-noise amplifier (LNA) that utilizes the CS-CPW for impedance matching. The robustness and feasibility of using the CS-CPW as a matching element in wideband millimeter-wave (mm-wave) silicon circuit designs are studied. Furthermore, the key design details of a mm-wave LNA are discussed. The designed monolithic microwave integrated circuit amplifier has a gain greater than 10 dB from 135 to 170 GHz with a peak gain of 15.7 dB at 160 GHz. The amplifier has a measured noise figure of 8.5 dB from 135 to 170 GHz, and an output-referred 1-dB compression point of -16.5 dBm at 160 GHz. The total power consumption of the amplifier is 32 mW.