Viewpoint: SiGe Fires Single-Chip Fractional N-Synthesizer

Jan. 20, 2004

Silicon-germanium (SiGe) semiconductor technology has long held the promise of high-frequency operation with high levels of integration. The process technology made headlines in the early 1990s with claims of device transition frequencies that could surpass expensive gallium-arsenide (GaAs) technology while using standard silicon wafers. While the technology is now making its way into a variety of integrated circuits (ICs), mainly for cellular handsets and wireless-local-area-network (WLAN) cards, its integration potential has been largely untapped. A single-chip fractional-N SiGe synthesizer from Centellax (Santa Rosa, CA), however, offers a glimpse of what this technology can achieve, using multiple varactor-tuned voltage oscillators to cover frequencies between 20 and 30 GHz and a total of more than 10,000 transistors on chip.

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About the Author

Jack Browne

Technical Contributor

Jack Browne, Technical Contributor, has worked in technical publishing for over 30 years. He managed the content and production of three technical journals while at the American Institute of Physics, including Medical Physics and the Journal of Vacuum Science & Technology. He has been a Publisher and Editor for Penton Media, started the firm’s Wireless Symposium & Exhibition trade show in 1993, and currently serves as Technical Contributor for that company's Microwaves & RF magazine. Browne, who holds a BS in Mathematics from City College of New York and BA degrees in English and Philosophy from Fordham University, is a member of the IEEE.