Since about one decade, one important development trend of IC industry is that the worldwide accept of the mode of fabless IC design plus foundry-type IC fabrication. This so-abbreviated F&F-mode has a great impact not only on IC industry but also on the IC-related research and education branches. Utilizing fabless IC design, for example, most universities can make IC study in most advanced processes but in bearable cost. The environment required for fabless IC design includes hardware of workstations, PCs and Internet networks, the software of CAD/EDA-tools, MPW(Multi-Project Wafer)-mode IC realization approaches, and IC measurement labs. For the design of digital dominant VLSI needs EDA(Electronic Design Automation)-tools on system and logic level, the design of RFICs and UHSICs generally needs still CAD-tools on circuit and layout level. The effectiveness of MPW is verified for fabless IC design. For measurement of RFICs and UHSICs, microwave probe station, RF probes of different configurations, and different instruments such as RF signal generators, pulse pattern generators, bit error detectors, oscilloscopes, spectra analyzers, network analyzers, noise figure analyzers, and so on.

For wireless transmission, the basic RFICs include LNA (low noise amplifier), up-conversion mixer, down-conversion mixer, AGC(automatic gain control)-amplifier, demodulator, modulator, power amplifier, frequency synthesizer, and so on. For optic-fiber communications, such key circuits as multiplexer, laser diode driver, trans-impedance amplifier, limiting amplifier, clock recovery, data decision, demultiplexer, and so on are required. For the design of all these RFICs and UHSICs, not only high-frequency transistors but also a series of passive devices such as inductors, varactors, transmission lines are needed. Such circuit techniques as frequency compensation, peaking, negative feedback, impedance matching should be utilized and innovated.

Professor Zhi-Gong Wang was born in Henan, China, on May 6, 1954. He received his M.-Eng. degree in radio engineering from Nanjing Institute of Technology (now, Southeast University), Nanjing, China, in 1981, and his Dr.-Ing. degree in electronic engineering from Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany, in 1990. From 1977 to 1981, he worked on radio communication techniques and computer aided circuit designs in Nanjing Institute of Technology. During 1982-1984 he worked as a lecturer on semiconductor circuit techniques in Tongji-University, Shanghai. From 1985 to 1990, he worked on high-speed silicon bipolar circuit designs for multigigabit/s optic fiber communication in Ruhr-University Bochum. From Oct. 1990 to Sept. 1997, he was with Fraunhofer-Institute of Applied Solid State Physics, Freiburg, Germany, working on high-speed GaAs circuit designs. Since Oct. 1997, he is professor of Southeast University, Nanjing, China. He is Senior Member of Chinese Institute of Electrical and Electronical Engineer and IEEE, and Chairman of the Advisory Committee of Electrical and Electronic Basic Courses of Chinese Universities. He is the author or co-author of 8 books and 230 papers, and inventor of 15 patents. Recently, he is involving in IC design for 155 Mb/s to 40 Gb/s optic-fiber transmission systems and for wireless applications and microwave systems.