TABLE OF CONTENTS I. Thayne, K. Elgaid and G. Ternent
Advances in integrated circuit technology are the key to opening and fully exploiting new market opportunities, as exemplified recently by the massive expansion of the mobile phone sector in the telecommunications arena. The success of mobile communications is fundamentally underpinned by advances in semiconductor manufacturing technology. These have delivered key high performance components in large volume and with high yield, resulting in low unit costs. Today, the RF circuit designer has a greater choice in technology than ever before with the availability of internal corporate and external foundries offering silicon and III V semiconductor bipolar and field effect device processes. The choice of technology ultimately depends on the application area and the component specifications. In this chapter, the wide range of active and passive device technologies utilised in contemporary MMIC realisation are reviewed, and key RF performance parameters such as bandwidth, gain, noise, power handling and linearity are compared.
Before discussing active and passive MMIC components, it is important to mention the properties of the semiconductor substrate on which the circuits will be produced. Until relatively recently, III V semiconductors (e.g. GaAs) were the only viable option for the realisation of RF MMIC components, as only III V devices could deliver the performance required for efficient system operation at RF frequencies. Continual development of silicon bipolar transistor technology has changed this scenario dramatically, such that silicon-based RF MMICs are now widely available. These advanced silicon technologies are produced on wafer...
