Ground-bounce reduction in narrow-band RF front-ends

Ground-bounce due to bond wire inductance is a well known problem in Radio-Frequency (RF) Integrated Circuits. In this paper we propose the use of series resonance with an extra bond wire to substantially reduce ground-bounce effects in narrowband RF front-ends. Instability caused by the ground bond wire is also tackled. Impedance balancing of output stage to null ground-bounce due to other on-chip circuitry is discussed. The proposed techniques are applied to the design of a power amplifier (PA) for 2.5GHz applications and detailed simulations are performed to support the same. © 2014 IEEE.