Hot carrier effect on CMOS RF amplifiers

This paper, for the first time, investigates hot carrier (HC) effects on RF power amplifiers in 0.16 /spl mu/m CMOS technology. The 0.16 /spl mu/m nMOSFET devices are stressed, and aged device parameters are extracted experimentally. Those aged device parameters are used to evaluate HC effects on a CMOS class AB RF amplifier working at 2.45 GHz for wireless communications. It is found that both output power and the power efficiency are degraded significantly.