ESD protection design for fully integrated CMOS RF power amplifiers with waffle-structured SCR

—Waffle-structured SCR (silicon-controlled rectifier) has been studied as an effective on-chip ESD (electrostatic discharge) protection device for CMOS RF (radio-frequency) circuits. In this work, a novel on-chip ESD protection strategy using the waffle-structured SCR is proposed and co-designed with a CMOS UWB (ultra-wideband) PA (power amplifier). Before ESD stress, the RF performances of the ESD-protected PA have been demonstrated to be as well as that of the unprotected PA. After ESD stress, the unprotected PA was seriously degraded, whereas the ESD-protected PA was keeping the performances well.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2008
• Where: ISCAS
• Authors: Ming-Dou Ker, Chun-Yu Lin, Guo-Xuan Meng
• Keywords: Effective On-chip Esd, ESD Stress, Hardware, ISCAS 2008, On-chip Esd