Progress of quantum electronics and the future of wireless technologies

Research in quantum electronics over several decades has fueled the creation and rapid growth of today's wireless communications market. Sales of electronic components into this market exceeded $25 billion in 2006. Nearly all cellular handsets sold today include integrated circuits (ICs) based on energy gap engineered transistors—high-electron mobility transistors (HEMTs) and heterojunction base transistors (HBTs). The success of these technologies notwithstanding, future wireless communications systems will require even more demanding IC performance, especially in the areas of linearity and low noise. We propose that a new concept in transistor design, wave-function engineering, offers un-tapped opportunities to realize these needed performance improvements.