Semiconductor technology for personal communications integrated gallium arsenide and silicon front-ends

This paper looks at the comparative merits of gallium arsenide and silicon semiconductor processes in the application of 2 GHz personal communications (PC) radio front-ends. To deal with this topic it is necessary to take a wider view which considers the radio front-end as a whole, taking in the architecture within a given PC system, the component and packaging technologies together with the semiconductor aspect. The authors also identify what is perhaps the bigger picture, which is the need to reduce the PC radio front-end to a single low cost module with a short time to market, designed for volume manufacture with de-skilled application into a production radio. The work on 2 GHz PC radio front-ends has been partly driven by an applied research project supported from the DTI LINK Programme and the authors´ own in-house radio product developments. The authors´ draw on the experience from both. The DTI LINK supported project has run for three years, and has had as an objective the comparative assessment of silicon and gallium arsenide semiconductor processes for integrated PC radio front-ends. As part of this project a new UK sourced low threshold GaAs process has been developed which has added to the project time scale. During this same period the authors have been developing 2 GHz PC radio products using the noncustom IC design technique which makes use of market available integrated circuit and discrete devices