RF IC's

My first involvement with RF-IC design was when I designed three IC's in the then prototyping Philips HS4 silicon bipolar process, offering the at that time (around 1991) staggering 12.5 GHz fT.

A DK-flip-flop decision switch, attaining the then world record speed of 11,3 Gbit/s.
An IQ-frequency detector, allowing unique quasi-homodyne FSK reception of our coherent optical system. This was presented as post-deadline paper at the Amsterdam ECOC'92.

When Hs4 became a released technology we designed a wideband AGC amplifier, with high gain, low noise and a very flat characteristic.
I was member of the team defining HS4 and its successor technology, which became the very successful Qubic1 BiCMOS process.

The group Integrated Transceivers that I took over October 1998 was the single group in Philips Research Natuurkundig Laboratorium (NatLab) serving all RF applications within Philips. Which were at the time still many!
The team focused on innovative concepts and preferably together with the business units real product prototypes. Applications were always related to either high frequencies (RF) or high speed transmission.

Hard Disk Drive pre-amplifiers
Together with the business in Caen (France) and the customer Seagate we developed 1 Gbit/s pre-amps for the read head, at that time 4 times faster than the best commercial products.
DVD Optical Recording pre-amplifiers
In order to meet specs the photo diodes (8 in total) were integrated on the pre-amp and the IC packaged in a transparent over-moulded package. They were eventually produced by the millions by Philips Semiconductors.
RF-CMOS
Right at this time the big RF-CMOS debate started. As Research we balanced between developing the first applications (mostly Bluetooth front ends in 0,18um) and providing an objective comparison between RFCMOS and BiCMOS (SiGe).
Integrated Silicon Tuners
We developed the first terrestrial Si-tuner IC in the world, that eventually made it to high volume production as the TDA18720 family, making Philips and later NXP Semiconductors the market leader in this segment.
Satellite Ku-band down converters
This was one of the first two applications of the new SiGe Qubic4G, targeting 10-12GHz satellite receivers. Would become a successful product family as TFF1044.
Optical networking cross-connect switch
20x20 12.5Gbit/s switches in SiGe. Became the TZA2060 product.
First experiments with cellular MIMO reception
First experiments with automated RF circuit optimization and lay-out.

After moving to Philips Semiconductors in 2003 RF-IC's became my primary occupation, and also after becoming BU R&D and Strategy manager the RF-IC's remained a substantial part of the portfolio. In all cases I was deeply involved in both the technology and platform roadmap definition, as well as monitoring project execution. In these years a very broad range of RF applications was covered:

Cellular transceivers
UAA3537/87/88 family of fully integrated Qubic4+ BiCMOS 2G and 2.5G GSM/DCS/GPRS/Edge cellular transceivers, partly using PICS integrated passives carriers.
Start of UAA3581/82 3G receiver and transmitter IC development.
With the acquisition of the SiLabs Cellular activity in 2007 (I participated in the due diligence process) we also obtained an RFCMOS single chip portfolio with the Si4210 family in 130nm CMOS.
For a while we had the SA9521/61 CDMA Tx and Rx development running although that never materialised.
After a lot of heated debate it was decided that the next generation 3G and 3.5G frontends was to be designed in 65nm CMOS. Before completion of that design the Mobile activities were sold to ST Microcircuits.
Dect cordless phone
1700MHz digital cordless was a simpler application than cellular and integration was one round ahead, with the UAA3546 Near Zero-IF (NZIF) transceiver in Qubic3. Given the price pressure the investment to go to CMOS was not economical and the business was sold.

Wifi
Philips Semiconductors was for a while market leader with IEEE802.11b Wifi radios through the SA2400, a Qubic3 transceiver used in the Intel Wifi reference design. It was followed by the lower power SA2405 in Qubic4.
Through the acquisition of Systemonic (Dresden, Germany) we obtained a chip set for the then emerging 802.11b/a dual-band systems at 2.4 and 5.8GHz. These were followed by the SA2459 802.11b/g and SA5255 802.11a front ends. The b/g-version was used in the BGW211 full RF+BB modules.
Bluetooth
This application was in the midst of the transition from classical RF and BB IC's to single-chip RF-CMOS SoC. However, Bluetooth remained a badly-defined and difficult to implement standard, so in this period all solutions were provided as modules in successive generations as BGB201 to BGB205, and ultimately the BGB260 BT+FM combo.
FM radio
With the TEA5757, TEA5767 and TEA5761 Philips had obtained a virtual monopoly of FM-radio IC's in mobile phones, mainly through our Nokia design-in. The 5761 was the first IC within Philips that used bumped WLCSP packaging. Then the TEA5990 was started, one of the very first RF-CMOS products in the company, using 180nm CMOS. After that the stand-alone FM function quickly disappeared, integrated into Bluetooth combo's.

The area where I've been involved longest has been the TV tuner IC's. While in Krefeld and Singapore my team was the lead customer of the Semiconductor group in Caen, and we jointly defined Mixer-Oscillators (MO), PLL's and the first generation MOPLL, the TDA6400, at the time a major integration step. Since then a number of major innovations in broadcast reception were developed:

The first terrestrial (off-air) fully integrated TV tuner IC, from the first product coming out of our Research team (the TDA8270) to the fourth generation TDA18275 in 2013.
Highly integrated Ku-band satellite down converters, again from the first Research-designed product TFF1000 to the fourth generation TFF1014.

The last years, next to the above, a few more RF applications kept me involved:

Ultra-low noise amplifiers (LNA) for 3G/4G cellular and Wifi frontends (the BGU8000 family)
Zigbee and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) ultra-low power transceivers for the Internet-of-Things sensor networks and personal health applications. The Zigbee JN5169 and JN5172 in 0.14um RFCMOS, the BLE NxH2003 in 40nm baseline CMOS.

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