A SP9T cellular antenna switch in 2.5 V CMOS thin-film SOI

This paper presents the results of a compact wire-bond SP9T antenna switch that was designed as technology demonstrator for a 2.5 V CMOS, 250 fs Ron-Coff thin-film SOI process. Through “layout-driven” circuit design, a small die size of 1.52 mm² was achieved for a fully integrated switch die containing RF-section I/O pads, ESD, decoder, level shifters and dual frequency charge pump to generate negative vss. The dual frequency charge pump was a requirement to achieve a fast start-up time of 10 μs and switch rise times of 3 μs. A low insertion loss of 0.42 dB for cellular low-band at 915 MHz and 0.55 dB for cellular high-band at 1910 MHz, harmonic powers better -76 dBc over battery and Band I/V IMD3 of -110 dBm were achieved. All ports show a high ESD tolerance of 2 kV HBM.