An assessment of the state-of-the-art 0.5 μm bulk CMOS technology for RF applications

We demonstrate that, given the appropriate layout geometry, state-of-the-art, salicided n-MOSFETs with 0.5 μM drawn gates exhibit similar g_m (160 mS/mm), f_T (20 GHz), f_MAX (37 GHz), and F_MIN (1.9 dB @ 3.4 GHz) as the more costly, metal-reinforced SOI or SOS devices of identical gate length. The record f_MAX value for 0.5 μm bulk CMOS is comparable to that of self-aligned, double-polysilicon BJTs