High-Voltage MOSFET-Based Stacked RF Switch With Extended Bandwidth Down to DC

State-of-art stacked MOSFET-based RF switches cannot handle dc voltages exceeding maximum ratings of individual transistors in stack. In this article, a shunt switch constructed from stacked low-voltage transistors and capable of handling high dc and ac voltages in OFF-state is demonstrated for the first time. The dc voltage handling capability is achieved by introducing a resistive gate bias network coupled to the poles of the switch. An analytical model of the bias network is presented in this letter. A hardware prototype of the proposed device has been implemented in a dedicated 65-nm RF-switch SOI-CMOS process. The measurements of a 20-stack switch demonstrated peak RF and dc voltage handling of 20V with the potential for further improvement and state-of-art linearity.