SOI CMOS technology for RF/MMIC applications-yes or no?

Abstract

SOI CMOS technology is now recognized as a promising candidate for low voltage RF circuits. This paper reviews (a) the RF and noise performance of SOI CMOS devices and future development tendency, (b) the performance of passive components on SOI substrates, (c) demonstrations of SOI CMOS technology capabilities for RF, microwave and millimeter wave circuits from 1 GHz to tens of GHz, (d) substrate coupling for integrating delicate RF front-end circuits with noisy large scale digital circuits on SOI substrate. SOI CMOS technology shows advantages in active devices, passive components, RF circuits and full integration potential. The main obstacles for its extensive commercialization are the fabrication cost, market requirement and thus model support.