On-Chip Tunable Active Inductor Circuit for Radio Frequency Ics

Abstract

The work presents a design of a gyrator-based on-chip tunable active inductor (AI) which can become an integral part of high-frequency integrated circuits. The proposed AI uses the Floating gate technology-based PMOS (FGPMOS) simulation model, where the on-chip, non-volatile programming ability of FGPMOS is used as a tunable active feedback resistor. The circuit specifications are first derived for the application at 800MHz to 2GHz. The design is simulated at 350nm CMOS technology and shows a temperature sensitivity of 0.13mV/oC as well as a noise sensitivity of about 10.97nV/Hz. The precise programming range of inductance value from 3nH to 9nH can be achieved. The circuit has a power dissipation of 5.02mV and a moderately high-quality factor of about 120. The layout of the proposed circuit has been designed on Cadence Virtuoso and fabricated at ON-Semiconductor, C5 CMOS process foundry of MOSIS fabrication service, USA. The complete design has a chip area of 18x30µm2. The fabricated results illustrate the on-chip tuning ability of the proposed AI from 3nH to 7nH with the help of externally applied Tunnelling and Injection voltages, respectively. The proposed design also simulates a tunable bandpass filter and a tunable Low Noise Amplifier.

Tunable RF MEMS Inductors for Two-Frequency Bands

“…Integrated inductors are essential components in modern RF circuits and have been studied in several recent works, [1], [2], [3], [4], [5]. In the early development of variable inductors, switchable inductors were the first design choice as a means of varying inductance values.…”