Characterization and Modeling of nanoscale MOSFET for RF design

Discussion

The discussion on previous pages clearly shows that there might be an opportunity to use nanoscale MOSFETs for ultralow-power analog and RF circuits, taking advantage of the scaling of the transit frequency in weak inversion, as long as there is no velocity saturation. But, this still remains to be demonstrated. Indeed, today, to our knowledge, no work has been published showing a full characterization of nanoscale MOSFETs in weak inversion for applications in analog and RF circuits. All the published measurements on transit frequency, maximum frequency of oscillation, minimum noise factor are made at high bias in strong inversion. No data exists for operation of nanoscale MOSFETs in weak inversion for analog and RF circuits. It would actually be risky to use the current long-channel models for weak inversion to design ultralow-power analog and RF circuits using transistors biased in weak inversion integrated in nanoscale technologies. This further motivates the investigations proposed in this project.

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