From Oxymoron to Mainstream: The Evolution and Future of RF CMOS

Well into the latter half of the 1990s, few experts believed that CMOS would ever become a credible RF technology. A scant decade later, CMOS dominates in many RF applications below 10 GHz. Recent developments show credible performance at millimeter-wave frequencies, and continued scaling promises near-THz operation within a decade. This paper tracks key milestones in the evolution of RF CMOS to identify broad themes that permit plausible speculation about possible futures.