The rapidly growing wireless communication industry is increasinglydemanding CMOS RF ICs due to their lower costs and higher integrationlevels. The RF front-end of such wireless systems often needs tohandle widely disparate signal levels: small desired signals andlarge interferers. Therefore, it becomes necessary to have highlylinear circuits to increase the system dynamic range. Howevertraditional CMOS circuit designs are usually limited in either theirspeed or in their linear performance. New techniques are needed tomeet the demand for high linearity at radio frequencies.

"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%. TOC:Introduction.- RF Devices in CMOS Process.- Linear Transductors in CMOS.- Linearization with Harmonic Cancellation.- LNA Design in CMOS.- Down-Conversion Mixer Design in CMOS.- Power Amplifier Design in CMOS.- Conclusions."

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.