Memristor-based Tunable CMOS RF Amplifiers

The growing demand to connect up the world is pushing wireless systems to be smaller than ever. This is part of the increasing move to a data driven world with billions of connected devices in the era of the Internet of Things (IoT) and space and energy are critical design criteria. Traditionally, miniaturization was possible owing to a focus in a single frequency and a single communication protocol. However, the real challenge is scaling multifrequency/ multi-protocol RF systems. It is highly desirable to have adaptable RF-chains, which means adaptable filters, amplifiers, matching networks, etc. CMOS is widely used as low noise, low-power, and high power gain amplifiers. A critical design tradeoff in RF amplifier exists between stability, noise, power, linearity specifications.

Memristive devices are two terminal passive circuit elements, whose resistance is determined by the history of the applied voltage or current, and is retained whenever the voltage or current is no longer applied (non-volatility). Nanoscale memristive radio-frequency switches have proven to achieve low insertion loss, high isolation and high cutoff frequency, while adding the characteristic non-volatility, low-energy switching, and small footprint of memristors.