A low-cost and high-density RF multi-chip module transceiver for 1.8-GHz personal communication service

The explosion of global mobile telephone market has resulted in strong need for wide range and variety of packaging technologies in order to supply personal phones with enhanced product miniaturization, cost reduction, and good electrical performance. In that regard, Multi-Chip Module (MCM) is inevitably the one of the choice for the packaging of the mobile telephone. In this paper, we introduce an RF MCM-L transceiver module packaged by BGA for a 1.8-GHz personal communication service (PCS). We have focused most of our effort on low-cost and high-density design for the module. Basically, the low cost design is achieved using MCM-L substrate. The miniaturization of the transceiver was accomplished using optimally unified decoupling capacitors, thin MCM-L substrate and bare-chip mount technology. The second level package type of the RF MCM-L transceiver is ball grid array (BGA) with the ball size of 400 μm. HP ADS and Maxwell software are used for the circuit and the interconnection simulation, and HP 8595E-spectrum analyzer is used for the RF measurement. The total area of the RF MCM transceiver is only 2.25 cm² which is reduced by 37.5% compared to the hybrid package type. The receiver of the RF MCM transceiver has exhibited typical 8 dB gain and 2.5 dB noise figure (NF). 1-dB saturation point is over -9 dBm. The transmitter of the RF MCM transceiver has had shown the typical gain of 25 dB. The power consumption of the receiver and the transmitter are 180 mW and 416 mW, respectively