Review of silicon-based millimeter-wave radio frequeny integrated circuits

Summary form only given. III-V based MMICs such as GaAs and InP were popular for millimeter-wave (MMW) applications at early time due to their superior performances. After the year 2000, silicon-based technologies gradually took over GaAs-based technologies in popularity for some III-V niche applications. Silicon-based technologies have been advanced aggressively and rapidly. Based on Moore's law, the period for a doubling in chip performance, including a combination of the effect of more transistors and their higher speed, is 18 months. Thus, silicon-based technologies are promising and their performances can predictably catch up with those GaAs-based technologies for some aspects in the system applications. Also, silicon-based technologies have much better integration capability than GaAs-based technologies. It is easier to integrate the baseband digital circuits into a single chip with MMW circuits in silicon-based technologies rather than that in GaAs-based technologies, which is a very important feature in many products. In this talk, the advances of the silicon-based millimeter-wave (MMW) radio frequency integrated circuits (RFICs) will be presented. The silicon-based technologies for MMW RFICs will be introduced briefly. In addition, the current status of the MMW RFICs will be surveyed and novel circuit topologies are summarized. Some representative MMW RFICs are illustrated as the design examples in the categories of their functions in a MMW system. Finally the future trend of the development of the MMW ICs will be addressed.