A 19.6–39.4 GHz Broadband Low Noise Amplifier Based on Triple-Coupled Technique and T-Coil Network in 65-nm CMOS

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Specific comments:
- in Formula 6 the gm seems to be dimensionless in the denominator: it is correct? If it is the same symbol used in the numerator there should be something wrong. Please comment

- How did the authors run the frequency simulations? Did you use post-layout simulations including parasitic capacitances extracted from the layout? Did you use personal models? Please comment.

- How did the authors bonded the die for the measurements, if the die was bonded in the IN and OUT pins? If you used wire bonding technique, how long were the wires? I am curios because at mm frequencies the bonding lengths might affect the transmissions acting as antennas. Please comment.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The structural parts of this scientific article are:

1.     Introduction ( Literature sources 1-6) is short. Purpose and object of the article: authors present a broadband LNA utilizing the peak-gain distribution technique and transformer-based triple-coupled technique to achieve the wide bandwidth and low average noise figure and  new compact T-coil-based network, placed at the source of  common-gate transistor in the first cascode stage, is developed to enhance the gain  performance.

 

 

2. Circuit design.

This is the main section for modeling and computation LNA (Fig.1-Fig.4, formulas (1)-(7), literature sources - 7-9). In order to achieve the high gain and wide bandwidth, 2-stage differential cascode structure and 1-stage differential common- source structure are adopted in this work. Cross-coupled drain-gate feedback capacitors  are applied for each stage to increase the stability, gain and isolation simultaneously [7–9]. Basically, the authors use known schematics and formulas.

3. Measurement results

This section describes the measurement results and photos of parts of the project (Table 1; Fig.5-Fig.8, Table 1, formula of  FOM - 8). The proposed LNA is designed and implemented in a 65-nm RF CMOS technology.  Table 1 shows a comparison between this work and similar works in terms of the LNA performance.

The works 5,10, 11, 12 selected in the Table 1 are practically unsuitable because their BW is narrow.

Suggestion to search for closer articles for this work. The introduction should also be expanded.

4. Conclusion

In this part briefly describe the main results, which are also in the title of the article and abstracts. Basically, this is not a conclusion, but a statement of key outcomes.

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.docx