Variation‐aware widely tunable nanoscale design of CMOS active inductor‐based RF bandpass filter

Abstract

This paper presents a novel design methodology for realizing a variation-aware widely tunable active inductor-based RF bandpass filter (BPF). The inductor-less filter is designed and implemented using voltage differencing transconductance amplifier (VDTA) as an active building block and a grounded capacitor, thereby validating its suitability for fully integrated circuit applications. Digital 'coarse' tuning and analog 'fine' tuning are employed to achieve better frequency coverage. The designed filter exhibits a tuning range of 1.65-3.015 GHz and a 3-dB bandwidth of 1400-122 MHz which translates into a quality factor of 1.17-24.71. It offers a voltage gain of 0-22.91 dB, noise figure of 28.16-28.95 dB, has a 1-dB compression point of 2.50-2.478 dBm and draws 0.065-0.232 mW power from 1-V power supply. Our proposed design shows a figure-of-merit of 82.08-91.27 dB, which is higher as compared to its counterparts available in the literature. The filter is implemented in 45-nm CMOS technology node using metal gate and strained silicon.

Uncertainty Quantification of CMOS Active Filter Circuits: A Non-Intrusive Computational Approach Based on Generalized Polynomial Chaos

“…In this aspect, Monte Carlo methods seem to have attracted considerable attention, although the ensemble volumes preferred may perhaps be insufficiently small. Among several recent publications proposing novel CMOS active filter structures, the ensemble volumes can be observed to be less than 100 [12]- [16], between 100 and 500 [17], and just a little more than 1000 [18], [19]. Such small ensemble volumes may compromise accuracy of the Monte Carlo analysis results.…”

“…In previous publications, random parameters in uncertainty quantification are chosen to belong to the Gaussian distribution [12]- [14], [17], [19], or occasionally to the uniform distribution [16]. The practically more realistic truncated Gaussian distribution seems not to be considered in general.…”

RF and microwave reconfigurable bandpass filter design using optimized active inductor circuit

“…ORCID Aymen Ben Hammadi https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0450-3137 Mehra et al 15 Hu and Mouthaan 28 Sun 29 Kumar et al 30 Ebrahimzadeh and Jalali 12 Sun et al 31 This work…”

“…In this article, we propose an alternative approach to obtain a compact wide tunable BPF for RF and microwave applications by using a differential tunable active inductor (TAI). Indeed, TAIs offer numerous advantages over on‐chip spiral inductors counterparts such as very small die‐area, wide, and tunable inductance value and quality factor, which has been used in multiband and low‐power RF integrated circuit (RFIC) applications …”

“…Indeed, TAIs offer numerous advantages over onchip spiral inductors counterparts such as very small diearea, wide, and tunable inductance value and quality factor, which has been used in multiband and low-power RF integrated circuit (RFIC) applications. [12][13][14][15][16] In the following, the proposed design methodology allowing a wide tuning of a BPF transmission coefficient will be described. Our approach consists of using differential active inductor realized by two single cascode grounded TAIs.…”