RFIC and MMIC Design
RF
IC design and MMIC design (Microwave Monolithic Integrated Circuit design)
are services that Plextek has been providing to its clients for over 10 years. In that time we have carried out the design of over 30
RFICs and MMICs using a range of Si IC and GaAs IC processes
and foundries. We have experience of using foundries in Europe, the
US and the Far East and have undertaken IC design using a wide range
of semiconductor processes, including: Si bipolar, Si RF CMOS, AlGaAs HBT, InGaP HBT,
GaAs MESFET, PHEMT and PIN diode. Our IC design experience cover frequencies
from baseband (low-IF receivers with baseband
demodulation) to mm-wave MMICs operating at
frequencies beyond 40GHz. Our chip designers are from a commercial background
with experience of taking IC designs from conception through to high volume manufacture and are aware of the issues associated with packaging, verification, validation, production test, yield and cost.
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Plextek has carried out Si IC design for major Si vendors such as National
Semiconductor. This has involved working with the IC design team
at National Semiconductor on the development of a number of RF CMOS
transceiver products. It included activities such as radio system simulation,
AGC system design, demodulator design, active slicing, clock recovery
design and the design of a diversity selection system. The layout above right is one of these RF CMOS transceivers, which is now in high volume production with over 500 million parts shipped worldwide. For more details please download our transeiver
IC design case study.
We have designed full custom GaAs MMICs for a wide range of applications,
including components for GSM handsets, mm-wave
ICs for broadband wireless access,
wide band LNAs, limiters and frequency converters for ESM systems, and
precision attenuators for instrumentation. The die photograph to the
right shows a 2-18GHz unpconverter MMIC fabricated on Triquints 0.25µm
PHEMT process. Our clients include major component suppliers, such as
Sony
Semiconductor and advanced system developers such as QinetiQ
and Aeroflex.
We are also able to re-design obsolete MMICs, or MMICs realised on obsolete
processes, so that pad compatible components can be manufactured on
commercially available foundry processes.
Plextek is an approved independent design house for the following foundries:
GCS is a pure-play foundry offering PHEMT, InGaP and InP HBT processes. The two die below are Plextek designs previously fabricated by GCS. On the left is a U-NII band Power Amplifier that covers both the 5.2GHz and the 5.8GHz bands. The measured gain is around 18dB with a 1dB compression point of just under +26dBm. On the right is a 5.8GHz VCO that has a measured phase noise of -105dBc/Hz at 100kHz offset.
WIN was the world's first pure-play foundry to offer fabrication on 6" diameter wafers. Processes offered include 0.15µm gate length PHEMT and InGaP HBT.
For more information on how you can make use of Plextek's IC design skills contact us.
