Fully-integrated CMOS RF amplifiers

Abstract

Parasitics associated with transistors and on-chip passive components, such as inductors and capacitors, as well as the package, limit the performance of RF integrated circuits. Modifications to the IC fabrication process, special packaging techniques, and the use of off-chip components improve RFIC performance at the expense of cost and size of the final product. Design of fully-monolithic RFICs, however, requires extensive use of sophisticated CAD tools to mitigate the impact of the aforementioned parasitic effects. Use of a CAD technique optimizes design of a distributed amplifier and a balanced power amplifier. These amplifiers are designed in a 0.6 /spl mu/m digital CMOS process, and use only on-chip spiral inductors with Q-values in the range of 2-4. Both amplifiers are fully-integrated, with the power amplifier requiring an off-chip balun for interfacing with the measurement equipment, and the distributed amplifier requiring only off-chip coupling capacitors.