This book focuses on high performance radio frequency integrated circuits (RF IC) design in CMOS. 1. Development of radio frequency ICs Wireless communications has been advancing rapidly in the past two decades. Many high performance systems have been developed, such as cellular systems (AMPS, GSM, TDMA, CDMA, W-CDMA, etc. ), GPS system (global po- tioning system) and WLAN (wireless local area network) systems. The rapid growth of VLSI technology in both digital circuits and analog circuits provides benefits for wireless communication systems. Twenty years ago not many p- ple could imagine millions of transistors in a single chip or a complete radio for size of a penny. Now not only complete radios have been put in a single chip, but also more and more functions have been realized by a single chip and at a much lower price. A radio transmits and receives electro-magnetic signals through the air. The signals are usually transmitted on high frequency carriers. For example, a t- ical voice signal requires only 30 Kilohertz bandwidth. When it is transmitted by a FM radio station, it is often carried by a frequency in the range of tens of megahertz to hundreds of megahertz. Usually a radio is categorized by its carrier frequency, such as 900 MHz radio or 5 GHz radio. In general, the higher the carrier frequency, the better the directivity, but the more difficult the radio design.

This monograph presents techniques to improve the performance of linear integrated circuits (IC) in CMOS at high frequencies. Those circuits are primarily used in radio-frequency (RF) front-ends of wireless communication systems, such as low noise amplifiers (LNA) and mixers in a receiver and power amplifiers (PA) in a transmitter. A novel linearization technique is presented. With a small trade-off of gain and power consumption this technique can improve the linearity of the majority of circuits by tens of dB. Particularly, for modern CMOS processes, most of which has device matching better than 1%, the distortion can be compressed by up to 40 dB at the output. A prototype LNA has been fabricated in a 0.25um CMOS process, with a measured +18 dBm IIP3. This technique improves the dynamic range of a receiver RF front-end by 12 dB. A new class of power amplifier (parallel class A&B) is also presented to extend the linear operation range and save the DC power consumption. It has been shown by both simulations and measurements that the new PA doubles the maximum output power and reduces the DC power consumption by up to 50%.

RF Devices in CMOS Process.- Linear Transconductors in CMOS.- Linearization with Harmonic Cancellation.- LNA Design in CMOS.- Down-Conversion Mixer Design in CMOS.- Power Amplifier Design in CMOS.- Conclusions.