Page 290 - System on Package_ Miniaturization of the Entire System

264 Cha pte r F i v e

Active
LNA
Passive
PA
Switch Trans
ceivery/ Base-band/
PHY MAC

RF-CMOS or SiGe CMOS

RF front end
No Moore’s Law Moore’s Law Works

FIGURE 5.3 CMOS limitations in the RF front end and how SOP can address miniaturization.
terms, SOP combines the best of both baseband and RF domain solutions. The baseband
section is dominated by CMOS technology for which Moore’s law for transistors applies
and can be taken advantage of, while the RF front end is driven by more than Moore’s
law such as with embedded thin-film components for antennas, filters, baluns,
oscillators, mixers, and amplifiers, which can be packaged efficiently utilizing the SOP
concept.
Figure 5.4 shows an illustration of the distribution of components between the chip
and package in an RF front-end module that utilizes the SOP concept [6–10]. The RF

Package

Filter MEMS
Antenna
MMIC
Fluidics LNA
PA
Power combiner
CMOS
Mixer
Driver Amp
Duplexer Balun
VCO

Resistors Switch
Inductors
Capacitors

FIGURE 5.4 RF SOP concept–semiconductor versus package partition.