Microwave applications of advanced semiconductor technologies

New semiconductor technologies, used in passive microwave applications, allow the integration of passives with high quality factors and the fabrication of novel RFMEMS components for switches and tunable capacitors and resonators. The use of these technologies results in a strong reduction of the size and the power consumption of wearable microwave systems. The scaling of silicon transistors, following Moore’s law, results in RF-CMOS devices approaching the performance of III-V and SiGe devices but at a considerably lower cost and much higher integration capability. The introduction of GaN based technologies offering new possibilities in the field of power microwave devices is discussed.