Practical integrated passive device technology on GaAs

An integrated passive device (IPD) technology has been developed in order to achieve lower cost, miniaturization and higher performance in RF and microwave devices applied to the front-end modules of wireless communication systems. Various kinds of high performance IPDs have been fabricated on a six inch GaAs wafer due to the well-developed, low cost RF passive manufacturing technology. Since this article is primarily about the practical design and fabrication of IPDs, it will discuss topics such as IPD fabrication technology, design flow, schematic circuit design and 3D EM simulation. Different kinds of IPDs such as baluns, power dividers, lowpass filters (LPF), and their measurement results are presented.