The impact of scaling down to deep submicron on CMOS RF circuits

Recent papers reporting CMOS RF building blocks have aroused great expectations for RF receivers using deep-submicron technologies. This paper examines the trend in CMOS scaling, in order to establish the required current levels and achievable performance for different feature sizes, if robust, easily manufacturable designs are to be implemented for cellular applications, The boundary conditions (system-level constraints) for such designs, in terms of the number of trimmed and untrimmed external components and the roles they play in relaxing active circuit requirements, are emphasized throughout to make comparison of active RF circuits meaningful. At 1 GHz, 0.25-mu m CMOS appears to be the threshold for robust, low-NF RF front ends with current consumption competitive with today's BJT implementations.