This thesis present a novel single-pole-six-throw (SP6T) transmit/receive (T/R) antenna switch for quad-band (0.85/0.9/1.8/1.9-GHz) GSM/W-CDMA operation and a single-pole-ten-throw (SP10T) T/R switch smart phone applications with ESD co-design, implemented in a high volume 180-nm thick-film Silicon on Insulator (SOI) CMOS process. The SP6T T/R switch employs a novel asymmetric topology for Tx/Rx branch for GSM operation and a switchable double LC-tank as a variable impedance block to ease the tradeoff among linearity, Insertion Loss (IL) and isolation. To the best of our knowledge, the proposed SP6T T/R switch is the first multi-band T/R switch using LC-tank which is fabricated. For SP10T T/R switch, an optimization technique of ESD co-design is presented and demonstrated in the thesis. The unique ESD simulation design methodology allows full-chip design optimization and minimizes the performance degradation caused by the ESD blocks. The SOI technology facilitates the design of high performance SPNT T/R switch. High substrate resistance of SOI improves isolation and linearity performance and enables the fabrication of high Q on-chip inductor, which significantly improves isolation performance. In addition, feed-forward capacitors (FFC) and AC-floating techniques are also employed to improve the linearity and power handling ability.

The measured P--0.1dB, IL and Tx-Rx isolation in the lower/upper band of SP6T switch are 37.2 dBm/35.6 dBm, 0.45 dB/0.75 dB, and 45 dB/40 dB, respectively. These results demonstrate the attractiveness of thick film SOI for the design of multimode cellular switches and monolithically integrated RF transmit modules compared to the incumbent technologies of GaAs pHEMT and bulk CMOS technology. The design in SOI CMOS offers the potential for more compact and lower cost RF frond-end modules (FEM) by integrating the T/R switch, antenna tuning module and control logic on one chip.