developed RF CMOS technology at
UCLA during the late 1980s to early 1990s. Pakistani engineer
Asad Ali Abidi, while working at
Bell Labs and then
UCLA during the 1980s1990s, pioneered
radio research in
metal–oxide–semiconductor (MOS) technology and made seminal contributions to
radio architecture based on
complementary MOS (CMOS)
switched-capacitor (SC) technology. In the early 1980s, while working at Bell, he worked on the development of
sub-micron MOSFET (MOS field-effect transistor)
VLSI (very
large-scale integration) technology, and demonstrated the potential of sub-micron
NMOS integrated circuit (IC) technology in high-speed
communication circuits. Abidi's work was initially met with skepticism from proponents of
GaAs and
bipolar junction transistors, the dominant technologies for high-speed communication circuits at the time. In 1985 he joined the
University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where he pioneered RF CMOS technology during the late 1980s to early 1990s. His work changed the way in which
RF circuits would be designed, away from discrete
bipolar transistors and towards
CMOS integrated circuits. Abidi was researching analog CMOS circuits for
signal processing and
communications at UCLA during the late 1980s to early 1990s. In 1995, Abidi used CMOS switched-capacitor technology to demonstrate the first direct-conversion
transceivers for
digital communications. It enabled sophisticated, low-cost and portable
end-user terminals, and gave rise to small, low-cost, low-power and portable units for a wide range of wireless communication systems. This enabled "anytime, anywhere" communication and helped bring about the
wireless revolution, leading to the rapid growth of the wireless industry. In the early 2000s, RF CMOS chips with
deep sub-micron MOSFETs capable of over 100
GHz frequency range were demonstrated. , the
radio transceivers in all wireless networking devices and modern mobile phones are mass-produced as RF CMOS devices. ==Applications==