High-performance and area-efficient stacked transformers for RF CMOS integrated circuits

Author

Fong, N. ; Plouchart, J.-O. ; Zamdmer, N. ; Jonghae Kim ; Jenkins, K. ; Plett, C. ; Tarr, G.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electron., Carleton Univ., Ottawa, Ont., Canada

Volume

2

fYear

2003

Firstpage

967

Abstract

A solenoid layout technique is used to increase the magnetic coupling between the coils in multi-level spiral transformers. Using this technique, transformers with the following performance are measured: (a) magnetic coupling with coupling factor k>0.95 and insertion loss s/sub 21/ better than 0.8 dB at 5 GHz; (b) self-resonant frequency f/sub res/>15 GHz with peak Q>10. The effect of high and low resistive substrates is discussed with measured results. Using this structure, the size of the transformer can be reduced from 50 to 400%.

Keywords

CMOS integrated circuits; MMIC; Q-factor; coupled circuits; high-frequency transformers; integrated circuit design; integrated circuit measurement; 0.8 dB; 15 GHz; 5 GHz; RF CMOS IC; high-performance area-efficient stacked transformers; high/low resistive substrates; insertion loss; magnetic coupling factor; magnetic coupling increasing solenoid layout techniques; monolithic transformers; multi-level spiral transformers; peak Q factor; self-resonant frequency; transformer size reduction; CMOS integrated circuits; Coils; Coupling circuits; Frequency measurement; Performance loss; Q measurement; Radio frequency; Solenoids; Spirals; Transformers;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Microwave Symposium Digest, 2003 IEEE MTT-S International

Conference_Location

Philadelphia, PA, USA

ISSN

0149-645X

Print_ISBN

0-7803-7695-1

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/MWSYM.2003.1212530

Filename

1212530