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This work presents a convenient and versatile prototyping method for integrating surface-micromachined microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) directly above IC electronics, at the die level. Such localized implementation helps reduce development costs associated with the acquisition of full-sized semiconductor wafers. To demonstrate the validity of this method, variants of an IC-compatible surface-micromachining MEMS process are used to build different MEMS devices above a commercial transimpedance amplifier chip. Subsequent functional assessments for both the electronics and the MEMS indicate that the integration is successful, validating the prototyping methodology presented in this work, as well as the suitability of the selected MEMS technology for above-IC integration.

This work examines the use of a forward body biasing (FBB) scheme to mitigate output conductance degradation due to short channel effects in ultra-low voltage (ULV) circuits with no additional power consumption. It is shown that FBB boosts the output resistance of a transistor such that the intrinsic gain reduction due to low-supply voltages can be compensated. This technique is then used to implement a low-noise amplifier (LNA) tailored for ultra-low power (ULP) and ULV applications. The proposed LNA uses common-gate (CG) NMOS transistors as input devices in a complementary current-reuse structure. Low-power input matching is achieved by employing an active shunt-feedback architecture while the current of the feedback stage is also reused by the input transistor. Moreover, a separate FBB scheme is exploited to tune the feedback coefficient. An inductive g m-boosting technique is used to increase the bandwidth of the LNA without additional power consumption. The proposed LNA is implemented in an IBM 0.13 µm 1P8M CMOS technology and occupies 0.39 mm 2 . The measured LNA has a 14 dB gain, 4 dB minimum noise figure, IIP3 of −10 dBm, and 0.6-4.2 GHz bandwidth, while consuming only 500 µA from a 0.5 V supply. The LNA operates with supplies as low as 0.4 V while maintaining good performance. Index Terms-Current-reuse, forward body bias (FBB),inductive gm-boosting, low-noise amplifier (LNA), short channel effect mitigation, tunable active shunt-feedback, ultra-low power (ULP), ultra-low voltage (ULV). His research interests include ultra-low power IC design, MEMS-based microsystems, advanced packaging, and efficient high-volume test and calibration strategies. Mourad N. El-Gamal (S'92-M'99) received the B.Sc. (Hons.) degree from Ain-Shams University, Cairo, Egypt, in 1987, the M.Sc. degree (minor in computer science) from Vanderbilt University,

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