A computationally efficient and rigorous simulation method for treating dissipative electron transport in nanoscale, thin body, fully depleted SOI MOSFETs quantum-mechanically has been described. Within the non-equilibrium Green function (NEGF) formalism, scattering can be simply treated on the base of Buttiker probes. The probe strength is related to the low-field mobility, which depends on the electron subband and longitudinal position. Therefore, the low-field mobility for every subband at every position along the channel has been calculated using the eigenenergies and wave functions along the confinement direction and the Fermi level along the channel per self-consistent loop. As a result, the effect of scattering can be rigorously treated under the NEGF formalism. Our model has been applied to nanoscale n-channel double-gate MOSFETs and the results have been compared to those calculated with the conventional model. Moreover, the dependence of the output current on the silicon body thickness for the case with scattering has been investigated. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.