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for MMIC common substrate is GaAs and for RFIC is Si, the difference is that u have more resistive substrate in MMIC technology therefore higher frequency passive components are available.also u have gold metal layers as routing pathes in MMIC which is a plus in high frequencies.
current trand in CMOS scaling is pushing microwave's lower frequency from 1GHz toward 10 GHz.
I think the definition of mmic and rfic are getting blurred now. FT of HBT is improving continously, there are already some papers about 60GHz transceiver using sige process from IBM or Jazz.
Extracted from:
"Technologies, Device Characterization and Design for Front-End Electronics up to W Band", Giannini et al., SRT Conference Proceedings, Vol . 1, 2002
In the selection of MMIC or MIC technology a series of parameters should be considered. Regarding transistor performances,devices utilised in MIC are manufactured in the same way as the transistor built in MMIC ampli fiers,but in the MIC case transistors can be properly selected for best performances.The hybrid “chip and wire ”ampli fiers are successfully employed up to Ka band (a wider variety of passive circuit element values and quality factors are available in the MIC case),while in V and W band is preferable to utilize MMIC designs due to the reduction of parasitics (shorter connections)despite of higher substrate losses,
reliability improvement and repeatability of performances.However the design of MMICs requires particular care since circuit tuning is obviously impossible.
A series of parameters should be considered to choose MMIC or MIC technology:
1 Transistor performance
2 Passive Circuit Performance
3 Frequency range
4 Cost
1 Devices utilised in MIC are manufactured in the same manner as the transistor built into MMIC amplifiers, but in the MIC case transistors can be selected to give better performances.
2
- A wider variety of passive circuit element values and quality factors are available in the MIC case.
- Shorter connections on a MMICs (source-grounded).
- Reduction of parasitics in MMIC, reliability improvement, repeatability of performances.
3 Short connections of MMICs become an important factor above 50 GHz.
4 MMIC technology is less expensive only for large quantities.
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