Integrated RF Front End with Stacked Transistor Switch
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Abstract
A monolithic integrated circuit (IC), and method of manufacturing same, that includes all RF front end or transceiver elements for a portable communication device, including a power amplifier (PA), a matching, coupling and filtering network, and an antenna switch to couple the conditioned PA signal to an antenna. An output signal sensor senses at least a voltage amplitude of the signal switched by the antenna switch, and signals a PA control circuit to limit PA output power in response to excessive values of sensed output. Stacks of multiple FETs in series to operate as a switching device may be used for implementation of the RF front end, and the method and apparatus of such stacks are claimed as subcombinations. An iClass PA architecture is described that dissipatively terminates unwanted harmonics of the PA output signal. A preferred embodiment of the RF transceiver IC includes two distinct PA circuits, two distinct receive signal amplifier circuits, and a four-way antenna switch to selectably couple a single antenna connection to any one of the four circuits.
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Citations
39 Claims
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1. (canceled)
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2. An integrated RF Power Amplifier (PA) circuit, comprising:
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a. an input node to accept an input signal with respect to a reference voltage Vref, the input node connected to a first gate of a first MOSFET, wherein a source of MOSFET is connected to Vref; b. one or more MOSFETs connected in series with the first MOSFET to form a transistor stack, wherein the first MOSFET comprises a bottom transistor of the transistor stack, and the one or more MOSFETs comprises a top transistor of the transistor stack, wherein the transistor stack is configured to control conduction between the reference voltage Vref and an output drive node, and wherein the output drive node is connected to a drain of the top transistor of the transistor stack; and c. one or more predominantly capacitive elements connected directly between a corresponding gate of the one or more MOSFETs and Vref. - View Dependent Claims (3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26)
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27. A multiple-MOSFET stack circuit for controlling conduction between a drive output node Vdrive and a reference voltage node Vref under control of an input signal applied between an input signal node and Vref, the circuit comprising:
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a. a series transistor stack of J MOSFETs MN, N being an integer between 1 and J and J being an integer 2 or greater, each MOSFET MN having a source SN, a gate GN and a drain DN, b. an input signal node connected to the gate G1 of a signal-input MOSFET M1 of the MOSFET stack; c. for 0<
N<
J, a series coupling between each drain DN and the source S(N+1) of a next higher MOSFET M(N+1) of the MOSFET transistor stack;d. for 1<
N≦
J, a gate coupling element that is predominately capacitive connected directly between each gate GN and Vref, wherein, for 1<
N≦
J, each MOSFET MN is biased to avoid exceeding breakdown characteristics of the FET MN; and
where each gate GN is provided with a suitable bias voltage, and wherein the bias voltage is decoupled to Vref;e. a source coupling for the FET stack between S1 and Vref; and f. a drain coupling for the FET stack between DJ and Vdrive; wherein both RF and DC voltages are divided across the transistor stack, and wherein each MOSFET M2 to MN has associated and corresponding bias voltages VB2 to VBN, wherein the bias voltages VB2 to VBN may be individually selected to adjust the DC voltage divided across each corresponding and associated MOSFET M2 to MN, and wherein the divided DC voltage across each MOSFET M2 to MN may be controlled by the bias voltages VB2 to VBN to be identical, or they may be controlled by the bias voltages to be any desired divided DC voltage. - View Dependent Claims (28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39)
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Specification