Silicon technologies for applications up to millimetre-waves: Some design guidelines

Abstract

This paper presents some guidelines for the design of silicon circuits, which are able to achieve state of the art performances in the microwave frequency range despite their integration with a standard technology. Firstly, we point out the benefits which may be expected from the large number of available metallic layers, and which make possible the implementation of highly integrated and low loss interconnects and passives. Next, we emphasize the advantages of microwave differential structures: without any increase of the circuit complexity, a very well balanced behaviour can be reached leading to a strong attenuation of common mode parasitic signals. Finally, the interest and the feasibility of mixed-mode circuits (analog with digital) are demonstrated through dedicated designs for microwave frequency synthesis.