RF Integrated Circuit Design

About this course:

This course covers the design of radio-frequency integrated circuits (RFICs) used for wireless communications, and it focuses on theoretical and practical RF circuit design techniques from architecture down to transistor level circuit design. The course starts with fundamental concepts in RF design, harmonic distortion, noise, impedance transformation, Smith-Charts and s-parameters, then introduces transceiver architectures and focuses on low-noise amplifier design. Next, lectures cover RF power amplifiers, phase-locked loops and oscillators. The course concludes with a design project in which a low-noise amplifier is designed and characterized through simulations. Special emphasis is made throughout the course on understanding the device and interconnects parasitics, the power distribution impedance effects, the fabrication technology limitations and the implementation of efficient techniques to mitigate these effects used for wireless communications. The course also focuses on theoretical and practical RF circuit design techniques from architecture down to transistor level circuit design.