Emerging technologies such as WiFi and WiMAX are profoundly changing the
landscape of wireless broadband. As we evolve into future generation wireless
networks, a primary challenge is the support of high data rate, integrated multi-
media type traffic over a unified platform. Due to its inherent advantages in
high-speed communication, orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM)
has become the modem of choice for a number of high profile wireless systems
(e.g., DVB-T, WiFi, WiMAX, Ultra-wideband).
Wireless communications has become a field of enormous scientific and economic interest. Recent
success stories include 2G and 3G cellular voice and data services (e.g., GSM and UMTS), wireless
local area networks (WiFi/IEEE 802.11x), wireless broadband access (WiMAX/IEEE 802.16x), and
digital broadcast systems (DVB, DAB, DRM). On the physical layer side, traditional designs typically
assume that the radio channel remains constant for the duration of a data block. However, researchers
and system designers are increasingly shifting their attention to channels that may vary within a block.
In addition to time dispersion caused by multipath propagation, these rapidly time-varying channels
feature frequency dispersion resulting from the Doppler effect. They are, thus, often referred to as
being “doubly dispersive.”
This paper reviews key factors to practical ESD
protection design for RF and analog/mixed-signal (AMS) ICs,
including general challenges emerging, ESD-RFIC interactions,
RF ESD design optimization and prediction, RF ESD design
characterization, ESD-RFIC co-design technique, etc. Practical
design examples are discussed. It means to provide a systematic
and practical design flow for whole-chip ESD protection design
optimization and prediction for RF/AMS ICs to ensure 1 st Si
design success.
Over many years, RF-MEMS have been a hot topic in research at the technology
and device level. In particular, various kinds of mechanical Si-MEMS resonators
and piezoelectric BAW (bulk acoustic wave) resonators have been developed. The
BAW technology has made its way to commercial products for passive RF filters,
in particular for duplexers in RF transceiver front ends for cellular communica-
tions. Beyond their use in filters, micromachined resonators can also be used in
conjunction with active devices in innovative circuits and architectures.
GaN is an already well implanted semiconductor
technology, widely diffused in the LED optoelectronics
industry. For about 10 years, GaN devices have also been
developed for RF wireless applications where they can
replace Silicon transistors in some selected systems. That
incursion in the RF field has open the door to the power
switching capability in the lower frequency range and
thus to the power electronic applications.
Compared to Silicon, GaN exhibits largely better figures
for most of the key specifications: Electric field, energy
gap, electron mobility and melting point. Intrinsically,
GaN could offer better performance than Silicon in
terms of: breakdown voltage, switching frequency and
Overall systems efficiency.
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