21.5 dBm power-handling 5 GHz transmit/receive CMOS switch realized by voltage division effect of stacked transistor configuration with Depletion-layer-Extended Transistors (DETs)

Abstract

This paper reports for the first time an over-20 dBm power-handling 5 GHz transmit/receive (T/R) CMOS switch. The Depletion-layer-Extended Transistor (DET), which possesses high effective substrate resistance, enables the voltage division effect of the stacked transistor configuration to work in CMOS, thus realizing this high power-handling capability. Furthermore, despite insertion-loss (I/sub L/) degradation due to double on-resistance with the stacked transistor configuration, a receive-mode I/sub L/ (I/sub L/@RX) of as low as 1.44 dB at 5 GHz is accomplished with the benefit of the I/sub L/ improvement effects in the DET, in addition to a very low transmit-mode I/sub L/ (I/sub L/@TX) of 0.95 dB at 5 GHz.