Whole chip ESD protection for 2.4 GHz LNA

Whole chip electrostatic discharge (ESD) protection for 2.4 GHz low noise amplifier (LNA) under 0.18 μm radio frequency (RF) CMOS process is proposed in this paper. Complementary silicon controlled rectifier (SCR) with different layouts for I/O pad ESD protection is evaluated and compared with traditional SCR and diode. Results show that the island complementary SCR (MSCRIsland) structure has highest figure of merit (FOM) and its ESD protection for RF I/O passes 6 kV human body model (HBM), while extra 0.28 dB noise figure (NF) and 178 fF capacitance is introduced into LNA by this ESD protection. LNA power clamp ESD protection is also designed as RC triggered various devices, such as NMOS, SCR and their mixture. Results show that RC trigger NMOS-SCR has high robustness and turn-on speed and its power clamp protection passes 5 kV HBM.