In presenting this thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements for a Postgraduate

Abstract—The increasing number of interconnect layers that are needed in a CMOS process to meet the routing and power requirements of large digital circuits also yield significant advantages for analog applications. The reverse thickness scaling of the top metal layer can be exploited in the design of low-loss transmission lines. Coplanar transmission lines in the top metal layers take advantage of a low metal resistance and a large separation from the heavily doped silicon substrate. They are therefore fully compatible with current and future CMOS process technologies. To investigate the feasibility of extending CMOS designs beyond 10 GHz, a wide range of coplanar transmission lines are characterized. The effect of the substrate resistivity on coplanar wave propagation is explained. After achieving a record loss of 0.3 dB/mm at 50 GHz, coplanar lines are used in the design of distributed amplifiers and oscillators. They are the first to achieve higher than 10-GHz operating frequencies in a conventional CMOS technology. Index Terms—CMOS integrated circuits, interconnections, microwave integrated circuits, oscillators, transmission lines, traveling wave amplifiers. I.

This dissertation describes the design of a CMOS 900-MHz bandpass amplifier that is suitable for RF transceivers. The work employs the state-of-art inductive degeneration techniques to minimize the noise figure and explores the use of lossy spiral inductors in high frequency circuit to realize input matching networks on-chip. A Q-compensation circuit is included to achieve a 25-MHz 3-dB bandwidth. Besides, a center frequency tuning circuit is also embedded to compensate for frequency deviations due to process variations. In the first prototype, a second-order bandpass amplifier had been fabricated in standard 0.8 μm single-poly, triple-metal CMOS process (HP SCN26G) provided by MOSIS ®. With a 3-V supply, at 950-MHz and a 3-dB bandwidth of 25-MHz, the measured voltage gain is 26 dB and the input S 11 is-13 dB. Under the same baising condition, the input third-order intermodulation product (IIP 3) and input-referred 1-dB compression point (P o,1-dB) are- 21.5 dBm and-31.5 dBm respectively. The image rejection at 140-MHz away from the desired signal is 20 dB. In addition, the Q of the amplifier can be tuned from around 2 to infinity and the center frequency can also be varied from 930 MHz to 1040 MHz. On the grounds that the measured