Thermal Noise in Modern CMOS Technology

Because of the high cut-off frequency (fT) in hundreds of gigahertz resulting from the aggressive reduction of physical size and the enhancement of carrier mobility, metal-oxidesemiconductor field effect transistors (MOSFETs) become widely used in radio-frequency (RF) and high-speed integrated circuits (ICs). However, when working at high frequencies and high speed, thermal noise becomes a critical issue preventing these circuits from their anticipated performance. This chapter presents how thermal noise is characterized, how it is modeled, and what is its trend in future CMOS technology.