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.