An extended true-single-phase-clock (E-TSPC) dual-modulus prescaler with a division ratio of 2 and 3 employs the forward body biasing (FBB) technique for achieving efficient on-the-fly speed and power control. The circuit is implemented in 0.25 urn CMOS. With the forward body bias voltage of 0.7 V applied to N- and P-FET's, the maximum operating frequency is improved by 80 and 87 % in the divide-by-2 and -3 modes, respectively, while the current dissipation is increased by 27 and 28 % As a result, the figure-of-merit of the prescaler is enhanced by 42 and 46 % for the divide-by-2 and 3 modes, respectively. The phase noise however does not show significant degradation at the FBB voltage less than 0.7 V. We believe that the FBB technique can be an efficient means of on-the-fly speed and power scaling in CMOS RF E-TSPC prescaler circuits.

Recent studies showed that conventional approaches being used to solve problems imposed by hard-wired metal interconnects will eventually encounter fundamental limits and may impede the advance of future ultralarge-scale integrated circuits (ULSls). To surpass these fundamental limits, we introduce a novel RF/wireless interconnect concept for future inter- and intra-ULSI communications. Unlike the traditional "passive" metal interconnect, the "active" RF/wireless interconnect is based on low loss and dispersion-free microwave signal transmission, near-field capacitive coupling, and modem multiple-access algorithms. In this paper we address issues relevant to the signal channeling of the RF/wireless interconnect and discuss its advantages in speed, signal integrity, and channel reconfiguration. The electronic overhead required in the RF/wireless-interconnect system and its compatibility with the future ULSI and MCM (multi-chip-module) will be discussed as well.

Highly linear and low power variable gain amplifiers (VGA's) with digitally programmable temperature compensation has been developed using a 15 GHz 0.5 /spl mu/m BiCMOS process for CDMA mobile phones. Receive-VGA (RxVGA) shows 135-dB gain control range, 4.95 dB noise figure at a maximum gain, and -1.35 dBm IIP3 at a minimum gain with current consumption of 8 mA. Transmit-VGA (TxVGA) shows an output P/sub 1 dB/ of 4.7 dBm with current consumption varying from 6 mA to 24 mA according to its gain. The temperature compensation has been achieved within /spl plusmn/0.2 dB variation over the entire temperature and gain range. In addition, for easy application of the VGA's for mobile handsets, a simple method is presented for a programmable temperature compensation. A two-bit digital input is used to modify the temperature compensation characteristics by 1.5 dB/1110/spl deg/C per a step.