Characterization of Spiral Planar Inductors Built on Printed Circuit Boards

The purpose of this paper is to propose an electrical model for spiral planar inductors on PCBs and estimate the electrical parameters of this model according to the technological parameters. In order to evaluate the accuracy of the model, several inductors on PCB were designed and the measurements were compared to the theoretical results. The obtained electrical model was validated by Pspice simulation. The design of an electrical circuit consists of several stages among which a very useful one is the simulation. This process considerably reduces the time required to complete a project as it helps the designer estimate the behavior of the circuit before actually building it. In the case of circuits that use inductors built on the PCB the simulation stage cannot be fulfilled due to the fact that simulators´ libraries don´t contain models for this type of inductors. These inductors are special components that require an appropriate simulation model that takes into account the parasitic elements that appear in the case of such a design. If these parameters are known (using some theoretical or experimental methods), then it is possible to integrate the corresponding model in the tested circuit and analyze the effect of this component over the rest of the circuit. The advantages of such inductors over the usual ones become from the manufacturing process that provides high-quality components, the performances of the systems being strongly influenced by the performance of its components.