Radio Frequency Integrated Circuit

Radio frequency (RF) chip sets have rapidly evolved to 5 GHz clock speeds, based on silicon-germanium (SiGE) bipolar complementary metal oxide semiconductor (BiCMOS) fabrication techniques and other advances by research laboratories such as Lucent Technologies and Raytheon. Playing a starring role in the defense industry's guidance systems, RF chips are more complicated to design than digital chips because they operate at higher frequencies. Despite many wireless communications and network systems termed "digital", the RF chips that support them are analog.