RF IC Design for Wireless Communications

This course will aim to establish a foundation for IC design of wireless communication transceivers using modern CMOS processes. The course will familiarise students with foundational concepts of traditional RF/microwave design as well as the design and architecture of various transceiver building blocks and sub-systems. Part I (Fundamentals and RF Building blocks) - This part of the course will introduce basic concepts to bridge the gap between analog design, electromagnetics, and RF IC design. Topics covered will include review of active MOS devices, transmission-line theory and resonantcircuits, review of scattering parameters, impedance transformations and Smith Chart, review of noise, linearity and other impairment metrics, review of two-port theory and amplifier stability, and introduction to different transceiver architectures. This will be followed by the design of key building blocks for RF systems starting with the design of integrated inductors and transformers, low-noise amplifiers (LNA), mixers, oscillators, and a general introduction to power amplifiers and frequency synthesis using PLLs. Part II (mm-wave IC design) - This part of the course will build on the concepts developed in Part I and cover the fundamentals of multi-antenna transceiver design commonly employed at mm-wave frequencies. Fundamentals of phased-arrays will be covered, followed by discussions on integrated mm-wave circuit blocks like phase-shifters/vector-modulators, quadrature hybrids, coupled-resonators, variable-gain amplifiers, and couplers/power-dividers. Additionally, relevant examples of state-of-the-art mm-wave transceivers will be discussed. Students will be assigned a multi-stage design project, featuring a study of system requirements and translation to circuit design specifications, followed by hand-analysis/behavioral-modeling, and finally, transistor-level circuit design and characterization using industry-standard RF-CAD tools.