On-Wafer Measurement Uncertainty for Estimating the Performance of Active RF Circuits

While common in other disciplines, most RF designers do not routinely and thoroughly estimate the expected range of performance of their circuits as part of the design process. We will discuss progress made toward this goal, including estimating uncertainties due to on-wafer measurements during the transistor model-extraction process and process variation. We will emphasize the importance of considering both systematic errors and less-well-understood errors, determined from calibration and measurement residuals, in circuit design simulations at microwave and mm-wave frequencies.