Silicon-on-chip Spiral Inductor Modeling And Its Application In The Rf Chip

Recently, the rapid developmental market of wireless telecommunication needs eagerly transceivers with light weight, small bulk, low cost and low power dissipation. Also, the technology of microelectronics progresses continuously. So silicon-based on-chip spiral inductor has received more and more international attention as it is a crucial element to radio-frequency intergrated circuit (RFIC).Based on referring to many papers, this paper summarizes the investigation status quo and development directions of on-chip inductor, sorts out three kinds RLC model of on-chip inductor, analyzes their modeling ideas and theories, and compares their merits and defects.This paper discusses in detail the modeling ideas and theories of classical Greenhouse and Jenei algorithms which calculate the inductance of on-chip inductor, educes the inductance expressions with the two algorithms and then concludes their merits and defects.This paper discusses in detail the generant mechanisms and physical meanings of skin effect, proximity effect and eddy current loss in high frequency by electromagnetic theory, analyzes their influence on inductance and Q, studies the classical models which simulate the inductance of on-chip inductor, and then concludes merits and defects of these models.Based on the aforementioned study, a novel silicon-based on-chip spiral inductor model is proposed, in which functions of both skin effect, proximity effect and eddy current losses in the substrate are accounted in the light of modified partial equivalent element circuit(PEEC) methodology and a full-coupled transformer loop. Inductors with different geometric dimensions or different technology parameters are chosen to verify the accuracy of the model. The simulated data of inductors from full-wave electromagnetic filed simulator (HFSS) and the model of this paper are compared. The results show that up to 20GHz, the model presented in this paper reveals quite good accuracy within 8% with data from HFSS. As the model presented in this paper is sufficient accurate and much more efficient than full-wave electromagnetic filed simulation, it is competent for the design and optimization of spiral inductors.Lastly, based on a TSMC 0.35um CMOS process, spiral inductors which are proposed by model of this paper is used to design the presented CMOS low noise amplifier (LNA) circuit. The center frequency is 2.4GHz. The LNA performance is simulated by Spectre RF in Cadence EDA software. From the simulation results, under 2.4GHz operation frequency, the LNA achieves power gain(S₂₁) of 11dB, input reflection coefficient(S₁₁) of -31dB, output reflection coefficient(S₂₂) of -42dB, reverse isolation(S₁₂) of -46dB, noise figure(NF) of 3.1dB, input third-oreder intercept point(IIP3) of 433mdBm and input 1dB compression point of -12dBm. The total power dissipation is 8mW.