Abstract

The continuous progress in semiconductor and module technology has indubitably fueled in the past years,together with the system design and algorithms,the telecommunication and wireless evolution characterized by a growing demand of new services and functions,the continuous decrease of mobile terminal costs,longer battery duration.The paper gives a brief description on the state of art and on going developments of key submicron RF Silicon technologies employed within the Wireless equipment, mainly taking into account the 2.5-3G cellular-phone and emerging WLAN applications as the natural interconnection of wireless communications with Internet. While high density CMOS evolution still represents the core technology development also for RF dedicated Silicon, Silicon-Germanium or Silicon Germanium Carbon processes,differentiating factors both in term of overall performances and costs rely now also on availability of integrated good quality passives,RF MEMS as well as RF odules and cost effective packaging technology.