Design of active inductors using CMOS technology

Active inductors are generally fabricated by using semi-insulating gallium arsenide (GaAs) technologies. However, the high cost currently involved in the use of these technologies restricts their applications to very specific integrated circuits (ICs). Therefore, the growing need to produce integrated circuits increasingly miniaturized for high frequencies applications with low production cost and low power consumption has stimulated the utilization of the CMOS technology on silicon (Si) substrates even in the microwave range. In this framework, the present paper investigates the possibility of implementing active inductors by using a traditional CMOS silicon technology for monolithic microwave integrated circuits applications.