Advances in RF foundry technology for wireless and wireline communications

Abstract

Improvements in foundry RF and mm-wave Si offerings over the last several years have allowed it to take market share from III-V processes for TX / RX applications. The increased RF switch content in handsets is now dominated by RF-SOI which also supports LNA and PA integration. SiGe BiCMOS technologies support the 802.11 FEIC and GPS receiver IC products and may be poised to take a larger share of the cellular PA market in the coming years. Higher-speed, high yielding SiGe BiCMOS is enabling new building blocks such as single-chip 60 GHz phased arrays. Here we review recent improvements in key technology figures of merit and integration that are driving the increased use of RF specialty silicon for high performance wireless and wireline communications.