CMOS Powers Toward System-on-Chip Integration

It is well known that complimentary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) has become ubiquitous in circuits for wireless applications in communications such as cellular telephony and wireless local area networks (LANs). Almost all elements of a modern radio front end and back end can be and have been integrated onto a single silicon die, allowing for significant reduction in cost in these applications. CMOS is perhaps the singular reason for the explosive growth in popularity and availability of wireless devices. It is because of this success that it is surprising that the radio frequency (RF) power amplifi er (PA) that interfaces the radios transmitter front-end circuitry to the antenna has yet to be integrated heavily into these wireless products. © 2011 IEEE.