Emerging Challenges in ESD Protection for RF ICs in CMOS

On-chip electrostatic discharge (ESD) protection design has become an emerging challenge for radio-frequency (RF) integrated circuits (IC) design as IC technologies migrate into the very-deep-sub-micron (VDSM) regime and RF ICs move into multi-GHz operations.The key problem originates from the complex interaction between the ESD protection circuitry and the core RF IC circuit under protection.This paper discusses the recent development in RF ESD protection research and design,outlining emerging challenges,new design methods,and novel RF ESD protection solutions.