HBT low-noise performance in a 0.18 /spl mu/m SiGe BiCMOS technology

Author

Greenberg, D.R. ; Ahlgren, D. ; Freeman, G. ; Subbanna, S. ; Radisic, V. ; Harvey, D.S. ; Webster, C. ; Larson, L.

Author_Institution

IBM Thomas J. Watson Res. Center, Yorktown Heights, NY, USA

fYear

2000

fDate

10-13 June 2000

Firstpage

201

Lastpage

204

Abstract

Noise figure and gain are critical parameters in the design of any product featuring a high-frequency receiver. We present here for the first time noise and gain characterization of HBTs fabricated in a development version of IBM´s new 90 GHz, 0.18 /spl mu/m-generation SiGe BiCMOS process with copper interconnects. At 2 GHz we report a noise figure of less than 0.4 dB and an associated gain of 14 dB, a significant (0.3-0.5 dB) improvement over prior SiGe and GaAs state of the art in a commercial process. At 10 GHz, we observe a noise figure of 1.45 dB, an approximately 0.7 dB improvement over previous offerings. This performance makes the 0.18 /spl mu/m SiGe BiCMOS technology attractive for RF, analog, and mixed-signal circuit design.

Keywords

BiCMOS integrated circuits; Ge-Si alloys; MMIC; UHF integrated circuits; heterojunction bipolar transistors; integrated circuit noise; mixed analogue-digital integrated circuits; semiconductor device noise; semiconductor materials; 0.18 micron; 0.4 to 1.45 dB; 10 GHz; 14 dB; 2 GHz; 90 GHz; Cu; Cu interconnects; HBT low-noise performance; RF circuit design; SiGe; SiGe BiCMOS technology; analog circuit design; gain characterization; mixed-signal circuit design; noise characterization; BiCMOS integrated circuits; Copper; Gain; Gallium arsenide; Germanium silicon alloys; Heterojunction bipolar transistors; Integrated circuit interconnections; Noise figure; Product design; Silicon germanium;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Radio Frequency Integrated Circuits (RFIC) Symposium, 2000. Digest of Papers. 2000 IEEE

Conference_Location

Boston, MA, USA

ISSN

1529-2517

Print_ISBN

0-7803-6280-2

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/RFIC.2000.854448

Filename

854448