Motivation for RF Integration

While CMOS technology has made great strides in its ability to fabricate radio frequency (RF) circuitry, many RF chip designers have yet to take advantage of this capability. After long relying on more expensive technologies such as silicon germanium (SiGe) and gallium arsenide (GaAs), RF designers who transition to the latest RF CMOS processes gain the enormous advantages of full system-on-a-chip (SoC) integration.Proliferation of a wide range of wireless applications, from cellular phones to wireless audio/video products, has created enormous opportunities for the semiconductor industry.  Although major components in traditional wireless systems have long been fabricated in a variety of CMOS and compound semiconductor process technologies, recent advances in RF CMOS have made it the technology of choice for these applications. RF CMOS is contributing greatly to the successes of wireless products in the marketplace.