Design of a CMOS RF MIMO switch for future wireless applications

Abstract

The project explored and demonstrated the feasibility of implementing a MIMO RF switch using CMOS triple well technology. A great challenge was presented by the low power handling capability of CMOS switches. The shortcomings were overcome by the introduction of floating body and series connection techniques. These techniques are shown to provide tremendous improvement to the power handling as well as insertion loss compared to those presented in literature. It has come to our attention that a recent publication has reported on the application of floating body techniques similar to that reported by this dissertation. However, the high power handling capability exhibited by the enhancement techniques have not been explored in literature and it will therefore be presented in this dissertation.