Growth in mobile communication and computing technologies over the past two decades has been driven by innovations in system architectures, software technology, and silicon integration. Analog/RF circuit technologies relevant to the Grand Challenges of developing more efficient infrastructure, conserving energy, and delivering better health care will be described in this talk.

Advanced CMOS is the enabling technology for radio frequency circuits designed into almost all low-cost electronic products sold today. The feat of doubling the number of transistors on a silicon IC every 18 months is projected to continue until we reach a gate length approaching 5nm (projected in ~ 2020-2030 by the ITRS). However, continued scaling presents the designer with what appears to be a new transistor with every generation, as the transistor’s electrical behavior is affected by evolutionary changes in fabrication. Circuit and systems designers are therefore developing scalable designs that can adapt to a dynamic technology platform.

Three examples from recent research into the design of adaptive, wideband, and scalable high-frequency electronics will be described in this talk. Wireless silicon sensors capable of measuring position and velocity accurately are necessary in many command and control applications. A recently developed FMCW radar transmitter IC incorporates the phase locked-loop, digitally-controlled oscillator, PA, and calibration circuits in 65nm CMOS. The ADPLL performs autonomous calibration and closed-loop DCO gain linearization in order to output a GHz-speed triangular chirp with high sweep linearity. The transmitter achieves excellent in-band/ out-of-band phase noise performance and ultra-low reference spur levels (-74 dBc). It occupies less silicon area, is scalable to future technology nodes, and consumes significantly less power than previous (all analog) realizations. Scenarios for improving health care often require low-power radios to monitor patients remotely. In the second example, a low-power, autonomous FM ultrawideband transceiver and power management unit that transfers data reliably at 100kbit/s and includes full on-chip digital calibration of the transceiver is described.
Finally, fiber-optic technologies in the internet backbone are migrating towards coherent modulation schemes to increase data throughput. A silicon electronic driver capable of producing the 6Vp-p output required to drive a Mach-Zehnder optical modulator will be presented as the final example. Based on a distributed amplifier architecture, the novel input interface enables performance competitive with III-V semiconductor technologies (i.e., 15ps rise-fall times at 10Gb/s) in a silicon IC capable of large-scale transceiver integration.