Patent ID: 7619462

Claim:
A monolithic integrated circuit (IC) RF switch comprising a plurality of MixedMode RF switches coupled together in a cascaded series-shunt configuration such that the output of a preceding MixedMode RF switch is coupled to the input of an immediately subsequent MixedMode RF switch, an input of the cascaded series-shunt configuration being the input of a first one of the cascaded MixedMode RF switches and an output of the cascaded series-shunt configuration being the output of a last one of the MixedMode RF switches, wherein a MixedMode RF switch is defined as one of the following RF switch types: (a) a depletion-enhancement (D-E) RF switch comprising: (1) a depletion-mode switch (D-Sw) circuit operatively coupled to receive a first RF signal from an RF input of the D-E RF switch and to selectively convey the first RF signal to an output of the D-E RF switch under control of a first control line C 1 ; and (2) an enhancement-mode shunt (E-Sh) circuit operatively coupled to receive the first RF signal and to selectively convey the first RF signal to ground under control of a second control line C 1 x ; and (b) an enhancement-depletion (E-D) RF switch comprising: (1) an enhancement-mode switch (E-Sw) circuit operatively coupled to receive a second RF signal from an input of the E-D RF switch and to selectively convey the second RF signal to an output of the E-D RF switch under control of a third control line C 2 ; and (2) a depletion-mode shunt (D-Sh) circuit operatively coupled to receive the second RF signal from the input of the E-D RF switch and to selectively convey the second RF signal to ground under control of a fourth control line C 2 x .