ESD Protection for RF Circuits

Wireless communication market is growing rapidly. In the first half of the twentieth century, wireless communication in the form of radio and television had the most significant impact on everybody’s life. In the second half of the century, the rapid development of semiconductor devices and integrated circuits lead to a much wider applications of wireless communication systems. There is an increasing demand for portable electronic devices such as cellular and cordless phones, pagers, wireless modems and GPS receivers. Furthermore, more options are constantly added to these portable devices. As a result, today’s cellular phones have a much wider capabilities such as sending and receiving data, pictures and even receiving radio and television networks. This evolution is a result of constant increase in the integration level of semiconductor devices and reduction in their cost.

There are various semiconductor technologies available for radio frequency applications. GaAs and silicon CMOS, BiCMOS and bipolar technologies are the most widely used technologies nowadays. In traditional RF circuits, GaAs, bipolar and ceramic SAW filters were used for the RF section, bipolar for the IF section and CMOS for base band. However, as CMOS technology scales into deep submicron regime, higher operating frequency of MOS transistors allows the design of a fully integrated CMOS System on Chip (SoC).