Integration of Silicon with Passive Devices Yields Advantages in Wireless Design

The wireless market presents conflicting demands to the RF system developer. Multi-band and multimode operation must be provided with improved RF performance, using less power, in a highly integrated form factor and, of course, at a lower system cost. These conflicting demands may be realized through the fusion of high quality, high tolerance RF passive components configured from package interconnects as well as metalization layers in advanced silicon processes such as RF CMOS and SiGe BiCMOS. This paper presents a brief overview of a unique approach to complex RF designs, employing a passives-based design methodology aided by specialized EDA tools.