High-Performance Silicon-Based RF Front-End Design Techniques for Adaptive and Cognitive Radios

Monolithic silicon-based RF front-end circuit approaches are presented as an alternative to traditional off-chip SAW and switch-based techniques, with the goal of implementing a fully integrated RF front-end. Tunable filters based on N- path techniques have demonstrated excellent noise and linearity properties, and are expected to further improve as CMOS technology continues to scale. Integrated duplexers for frequency division duplex wireless standards have also been developed recently, based on a broadband hybrid transformer approach.