Abstract
This paper presents the first co-design analysis of 28GHz broadband single-pole double-throw (SPDT) distributed travelling wave RF switches implemented in a foundry 22nm fully-depleted silicon-on-insulator (FDSOI) CMOS technology, featuring 9KV full-chip human body model (HBM) electrostatic discharge (ESD) protection. This ESD-protected millimeter wave (mmWave) SPDT switch is designed for highly reliable above-6GHz 5th-generation (5G) mobile systems, covering the n257 and n258 bands. Adverse influences of the inherent ESD-induced parasitic effects are characterized, revealing that the ESD effects can severely affect RF switch performance in mmWave bands. A new ESD-mmWave-switch co-design technique was developed to address this ESD design challenge for mmWave switches, which was validated in Si measurements, e.g., improving the switch insertion loss (IL) by 4dB for the 28GHz SPDT travelling wave switches fabricated. This design also achieves the highest reported charged device model (CDM) ESD protection of 1.84A in Si testing. This study proves that ESD-mmWave-switch co-design is critical to RF front-end designs for 5G mobile systems, which typically require robust ESD protection, but are also very sensitive to the inevitable ESD-induced parasitic effects.
Highlights
RF switches are indispensable components to RF front-end modules (FEM) and systems-on-chip (SoC) for mobile systems, for complex 5G wireless applications utilizing ultrawide frequency spectrums, large number of dynamic frequency channels, and time division duplexing (TDD) technology across millimeter-wave frequency bands
This paper reports the first comprehensive electrostatic discharge (ESD)-mmWaveswitch co-design analysis of millimeter wave (mmWave) 28GHz travelling wave single-pole double-throw (SPDT) switches designed and fabricated in foundry 22nm fullydepleted silicon-on-insulator (FDSOI) CMOS technology for 5G n257 and n258 bands
The measured insertion loss (IL) and Iso are comparable to the state-of-the-art mmWave switches around 28GHz
Summary
RF switches are indispensable components to RF front-end modules (FEM) and systems-on-chip (SoC) for mobile systems, for complex 5G wireless applications utilizing ultrawide frequency spectrums, large number of dynamic frequency channels, and time division duplexing (TDD) technology across millimeter-wave frequency bands. Any on-chip ESD protection structures come with inevitable ESD-induced design overhead effects, e.g., parasitic capacitance (CESD), leakages and noises. High-frequency broadband RF ICs are very sensitive to these ESD-induced parasitic effects, which requires careful design considerations [1, 2]. Significant influence of ESD protection on 28/38GHz RF switches for 5G mobiles was reported, showing severe insertion loss degradation of 5~10dB due to 4KV HBM ESD protection, which indicates that conventional RF ESD design techniques are incapable of handling robust ESD protection for millimeter-wave RF ICs [8]. It is obvious that ESD-RFIC co-design in mmWave frequency bands, for above-6GHz 5G RF ICs, must be studied comprehensively and understood thoroughly, especially considering both HBM and CDM ESD protection for very high frequency and ultrawide bandwidth RF FEM designs. This paper, an extension to a conference brief [9], presents a comprehensive co-design analysis study of a 9KV-ESD-protected 28GHz distributed travelling wave mmWave SPDT RF switch designed and fabricated in a 22nm FD-SOI technology for 5G systems, aiming to provide a practical ESD-mmWave-switch co-design technique for above-6GHz 5G wireless systems
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