A novel design methodology based on a semi-empirical model and its application in analog and RF CMOS design

Analog and radio frequency (RF) complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) integrated circuit design poses numerous challenges due to the need to balance completely different characteristics. The shrinking of technology in the CMOS process, resulting in lower supply voltages and short channel effects like velocity saturation and vertical field mobility reduction (VFMR), has further complicated these challenges. This paper introduces a novel pre-simulation program with integrated circuits emphasis (pre-SPICE) design methodology for optimizing analog/RF building blocks based on a semi-empirical model. This method utilizes a dedicated tool and the essential parameter of the inversion coefficient (IC) for circuit design. Two examples of analog/RF design have been studied in detail to clarify the design flow and effectiveness of the proposed methodology. A cascode common-source low-noise amplifier (Cascode CS-LNA) and an LC-voltage-controlled oscillator (LC-VCO) have been implemented in CMOS technology, and their results were compared to state-of-the-art performance.