A radio-frequency integrated circuit, or RFIC, is an electrical integrated circuit operating in a frequency range suitable for wireless transmission. Applications for RFICs include radar and communications.
There is considerable interest in RFIC research due to the cost benefit of shifting as much of the wireless transceiver as possible to a single technology, which in turn would allow for a system on a chip solution as opposed to the more common system-on-package. [1] This interest is bolstered by the pervasiveness of wireless capabilities in electronics. Current research focuses on integrating the RF power amplifier (PA) with CMOS technology, either by using MOSFETs or SiGe HBTs, on RF CMOS mixed-signal integrated circuit chips.
RFIC is also used to refer to the annual RFIC Symposium, a research conference held as part of Microwave Week, which is headlined by the International Microwave Symposium. Other peer-reviewed research conferences are listed in the table below.
RFIC-related conferences | Websites for conferences |
---|---|
International Solid-State Circuits Conference | isscc.org |
RFIC Symposium | rfic-ieee.org |
International Microwave Symposium | ims-ieee.org |
Radio Wireless Week | radiowirelessweek.org |
BiCMOS and Compound Semiconductor Integrated Circuits and Technology Symposium | bcicts.org |
International Symposium on Circuits and Systems | ieee-cas.org |
Complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor is a type of metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) fabrication process that uses complementary and symmetrical pairs of p-type and n-type MOSFETs for logic functions. CMOS technology is used for constructing integrated circuit (IC) chips, including microprocessors, microcontrollers, memory chips, and other digital logic circuits. CMOS technology is also used for analog circuits such as image sensors, data converters, RF circuits, and highly integrated transceivers for many types of communication.
Silicon on sapphire (SOS) is a hetero-epitaxial process for metal–oxide–semiconductor (MOS) integrated circuit (IC) manufacturing that consists of a thin layer of silicon grown on a sapphire wafer. SOS is part of the silicon-on-insulator (SOI) family of CMOS technologies.
A mixed-signal integrated circuit is any integrated circuit that has both analog circuits and digital circuits on a single semiconductor die. Their usage has grown dramatically with the increased use of cell phones, telecommunications, portable electronics, and automobiles with electronics and digital sensors.
RF Micro Devices, was an American company that designed and manufactured high-performance radio frequency systems and solutions for applications that drive wireless and broadband communications. Headquartered in Greensboro, North Carolina, RFMD traded on the NASDAQ under the symbol RFMD. The Company was founded in Greensboro, North Carolina, in 1991. RF Micro had 3500 employees, 1500 of them in Guilford County, North Carolina.
Distributed active transformer is a circuit topology that allows low-voltage transistors to be used to generate large amounts of RF power. Its main use has been in making integrated CMOS power amplifier for wireless applications, such as GSM/GPRS cellular phones.
A radio-frequency microelectromechanical system is a microelectromechanical system with electronic components comprising moving sub-millimeter-sized parts that provide radio-frequency (RF) functionality. RF functionality can be implemented using a variety of RF technologies. Besides RF MEMS technology, III-V compound semiconductor, ferrite, ferroelectric, silicon-based semiconductor, and vacuum tube technology are available to the RF designer. Each of the RF technologies offers a distinct trade-off between cost, frequency, gain, large-scale integration, lifetime, linearity, noise figure, packaging, power handling, power consumption, reliability, ruggedness, size, supply voltage, switching time and weight.
Edholm's law, proposed by and named after Phil Edholm, refers to the observation that the three categories of telecommunication, namely wireless (mobile), nomadic and wired networks (fixed), are in lockstep and gradually converging. Edholm's law also holds that data rates for these telecommunications categories increase on similar exponential curves, with the slower rates trailing the faster ones by a predictable time lag. Edholm's law predicts that the bandwidth and data rates double every 18 months, which has proven to be true since the 1970s. The trend is evident in the cases of Internet, cellular (mobile), wireless LAN and wireless personal area networks.
Asad Ali Abidi is a Pakistani-American electrical engineer. He serves as a tenured professor at University of California, Los Angeles, and is the inaugural holder of the Abdus Salam Chair at the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS). He is best known for pioneering RF CMOS technology during the late 1980s to early 1990s. As of 2008, the radio transceivers in all wireless networking devices and modern mobile phones are mass-produced as RF CMOS devices.
AWR Corporation is an electronic design automation (EDA) software company, formerly known as Applied Wave Research, and then acquired by National Instruments
RF microwave CAE CAD is computer-aided design (CAD) using computer technology to aid in the design, modeling, and simulation of an RF or microwave product. It is a visual and symbol-based method of communication whose conventions are particular to RF/microwave engineering.
Thomas H. Lee is a professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at Stanford University. Lee's research focus has been on gigahertz-speed wireline and wireless integrated circuits built in conventional silicon technologies, particularly CMOS; microwave; and RF circuits.
Mau-Chung Frank Chang is Distinguished Professor and the Chairman of Electrical Engineering department at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he conducts research and teaching on RF CMOS design, high speed integrated circuit design, data converter, and mixed-signal circuit designs. He is the Director of the UCLA High Speed Electronics Laboratory.
Ali Hajimiri is an academic, entrepreneur, and inventor in various fields of engineering, including electrical engineering and biomedical engineering. He is the Bren Professor of Electrical Engineering and Medical Engineering at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).
Payam Heydari is an Iranian-American Professor who is noted for his contribution to the field of radio-frequency and millimeter-wave integrated circuits.
Natalino Camilleri from the Nitero, Inc., Austin, TX was named Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) in 2015 for leadership in radio frequency integrated circuits and systems.
Stepan Lucyszyn FREng, FIEEE is a British engineer, inventor and technologist, and has been a Professor of Millimetre-wave Systems at Imperial College London, England, since 2016. He was elevated to Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) in 2014 and elected to Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (RAEng) in 2023. Lucyszyn's research has mainly focused on monolithic microwave integrated circuits (MMICs), radio frequency microelectromechnical systems, wireless power transfer (WPT), thermal infrared technologies and additive manufacturing.
RF CMOS is a metal–oxide–semiconductor (MOS) integrated circuit (IC) technology that integrates radio-frequency (RF), analog and digital electronics on a mixed-signal CMOS RF circuit chip. It is widely used in modern wireless telecommunications, such as cellular networks, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, GPS receivers, broadcasting, vehicular communication systems, and the radio transceivers in all modern mobile phones and wireless networking devices. RF CMOS technology was pioneered by Pakistani engineer Asad Ali Abidi at UCLA during the late 1980s to early 1990s, and helped bring about the wireless revolution with the introduction of digital signal processing in wireless communications. The development and design of RF CMOS devices was enabled by van der Ziel's FET RF noise model, which was published in the early 1960s and remained largely forgotten until the 1990s.
Ahmadreza Rofougaran, also known as Reza Rofougaran is an Iranian-American Electrical engineer, inventor and entrepreneur.
Mohamad Sawan is a Canadian-Lebanese electrical engineer, academic and researcher. He is a Chair Professor at Westlake University, China, and an Emeritus Professor of Electrical Engineering at Polytechnique Montréal, Canada.