Transforming RF and mm-Wave CMOS circuits

This papers highlights the design of RF and mm-wave building blocks which achieve high performance despite implementation in low-voltage digital CMOS technology. It is shown that integrated circuit transformers can greatly aid the design of such circuits by serving many roles, such as impedance matching, AC coupling, voltage combining, and converting signals from single-ended to differential form. Design, layout, and simulation strategies will be reviewed and several key power amplifier (PA) building blocks will be demonstrated.