RF Integrated Circuit Design

This course covers the design of radio-frequency integrated circuits (RFICs) used for wireless communications, and 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, effects of nonlinearity, harmonic distortion, noise figure, impedance transformation, Smith Chart and s-parameters, analog and digital modulations, then introduces transceiver architectures, including direct conversion receiver, focusing 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 noise simulations and optimization. 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 the transistor level.