GaAs cryo-cooled LNA for C-band radioastronomy applications

The design procedure and measurements of a C-band high-performance GaAs cryo-cooled low noise amplifier (LNA) are presented. The latter provides 30 dB gain, a noise figure (NF) lower than 0.12 dB (i.e. 8 K equivalent noise temperature) at 25 K operating temperature, with 35 mW DC bias power only. An appropriate scaling of the device gate periphery has been adopted to trade-off the LNA's NF and DC power consumption.