Radio-Frequency Integrated Circuit Design

The boom of wireless and mobile networks has led to an ever-increasing demand for high performance, low-power, and low-cost radio-frequency integrated circuit (RFIC) design. Advances in silicon and silicon–germanium-based technologies can now provide highly integrated system-on-chip (SOC). In spite of this significant motivation, this talk provides information about the fundamentals of RFIC design for wireless communication systems. The talk starts with a discussion on the potential applications, the technology trade-offs, and challenges on the RFIC design. We then focus on wireless transceiver IC designs with the brief analysis for each analogy front-end block, such as low-noise-amplifier (LNA), mixer, and voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) designs. We will also present some essential topics in RFIC testing and practical implementations.