RF Integrated Circuits in Standard CMOS Technologies

Since several years the research in the possibilities of CMOS technologies for RF applications is growning enormously. The trend towards deep sub-micron technologies allows the operation frequency of CMOS circuits above 1GHz, which opens the way to integrated CMOS RF circuits. Several research groups have developed high performance down-converters, low phase noise voltage controlled oscillators and dual modulus prescalers in standard CMOS technologies. The research has already demonstrated fully integrated receivers and VCO circuits with no external components, nor tuning or trimming. Further research on low noise amplifiers, up-converters, synthesizers and power amplifiers will hopefully result in CMOS RF circuits for fully integrated transceivers for telecommunication applications.