CMOS RF Low-Noise Amplifier Design for Variability and Reliability

An adaptive substrate (body) bias design for variability and reliability for a CMOS low-noise amplifier (LNA) is analyzed. The proposed body biasing scheme provides a radio-frequency circuit that is resilient to process variations and device reliability. Small-signal models including substrate bias effect are developed for noise figure and small-signal power gain sensitivity. The cascode LNA operating at 24 GHz with the adaptive substrate bias scheme is compared with the LNA without body bias using the PTM 65-nm technology. The modeling and simulation results show that the adaptive substrate bias reduces the sensitivity of noise figure and minimum noise figure subject to process variations and device aging such as threshold voltage shift and electron mobility degradation.

[1]  F. Schwierz,et al.  RF Transistors: Performance Trends Versus ITRS Targets , 2006, 2006 International Caribbean Conference on Devices, Circuits and Systems.

[2]  V. Huard,et al.  Interface trap generation and hole trapping under NBTI and PBTI in advanced CMOS technology with a 2-nm gate oxide , 2004, IEEE Transactions on Device and Materials Reliability.

[3]  James H. Stathis,et al.  The negative bias temperature instability in MOS devices: A review , 2006, Microelectron. Reliab..

[4]  G. Gielen,et al.  A 14-bit 200-MHz Current-Steering DAC With Switching-Sequence Post-Adjustment Calibration , 2007, IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits.

[5]  C.H. Kim,et al.  Silicon Odometer: An On-Chip Reliability Monitor for Measuring Frequency Degradation of Digital Circuits , 2007, 2007 IEEE Symposium on VLSI Circuits.

[6]  Jeffrey Bokor,et al.  Extremely scaled silicon nano-CMOS devices , 2003, Proc. IEEE.

[7]  A. Ziel.  Noise in solid state devices and circuits , 1986 .

[8]  Chaitali Chakrabarti,et al.  Random variability modeling and its impact on scaled CMOS circuits , 2010 .

[9]  Kelin Kuhn,et al.  Managing Process Variation in Intel’s 45nm CMOS Technology , 2008 .

[10]  Yiming Li,et al.  Device and circuit level suppression techniques for random-dopant-induced static noise margin fluctuation in 16-nm-gate SRAM cell , 2010, Microelectron. Reliab..

[11]  J.S. Yuan,et al.  CMOS RF Design for Reliability Using Adaptive Gate–Source Biasing , 2008, IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices.

[12]  Hua Wang,et al.  Reliability Issues in Deep Deep Submicron Technologies: Time-Dependent Variability and its Impact on Embedded System Design , 2006, VLSI-SoC.

[13]  M. Heyns,et al.  Soft Breakdown of Ultra-Thin Gate Oxide Layers , 1995, ESSDERC '95: Proceedings of the 25th European Solid State Device Research Conference.

[14]  Elyse Rosenbaum,et al.  Hot carrier induced degradation in deep submicron MOSFETs at 100 °C , 2000 .

[15]  Massoud Pedram,et al.  NBTI-aware flip-flop characterization and design , 2008, GLSVLSI '08.

[16]  A. van der Ziel,et al.  Thermal Noise in Field-Effect Transistors , 1962 .

[17]  Jaume Abella,et al.  Penelope: The NBTI-Aware Processor , 2007, 40th Annual IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Microarchitecture (MICRO 2007).

[18]  E. Rosenbaum,et al.  On the mechanism for interface trap generation in MOS transistors due to channel hot carrier stressing , 2000, IEEE Electron Device Letters.

[19]  Yiming Li,et al.  Random-Dopant-Induced Variability in Nano-CMOS Devices and Digital Circuits , 2009, IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices.

[20]  Thomas H. Lee,et al.  The Design of CMOS Radio-Frequency Integrated Circuits: RF CIRCUITS THROUGH THE AGES , 2003 .

[21]  M.B. Ketchen,et al.  Ring oscillators for CMOS process tuning and variability control , 2006, IEEE Transactions on Semiconductor Manufacturing.

[22]  Chuanzhao Yu,et al.  CMOS Device and Circuit Degradations Subject to $\hbox{HfO}_{2}$ Gate Breakdown and Transient Charge-Trapping Effect , 2007, IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices.

[23]  M. Denais,et al.  NBTI degradation: From physical mechanisms to modelling , 2006, Microelectron. Reliab..

[24]  Scott A. Mahlke,et al.  Data Access Partitioning for Fine-grain Parallelism on Multicore Architectures , 2007, 40th Annual IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Microarchitecture (MICRO 2007).