Utilization of MEMS Tunable Inductors in the design of RF voltage-controlled oscillators

Author

Casha, Owen ; Grech, Ivan ; Micallef, Joseph ; Gatt, Edward ; Morche, Dominique ; Viala, Bernard ; Michel, Jean Philippe ; Vincent, Pierre ; De Foucauld, Emeric

Author_Institution

Dept. of Microelectron. & Nanoelectron., Univ. of Malta, Msida

fYear

2008

fDate

Aug. 31 2008-Sept. 3 2008

Firstpage

718

Lastpage

721

Abstract

This paper presents the concept of using a MEMS piezoelectric actuated tunable inductor in the design of a wideband high performance VCO. Furthermore, a model of the tunable inductor is presented to facilitate the VCO design and simulation. In addition, by means of this model important characteristics of the tunable inductor can be derived enabling a design of the VCO to be superior in phase noise and power consumption to one which makes use of conventional capacitive tuning as indicated by the simulation results.

Keywords

inductors; micromechanical devices; radiofrequency oscillators; voltage-controlled oscillators; MEMS; RF voltage-controlled oscillators; VCO; phase noise; piezoelectric actuated tunable inductor; power consumption; Energy consumption; Integrated circuit technology; Magnetic cores; Micromechanical devices; Phase noise; Radio frequency; Thin film inductors; Tunable circuits and devices; Tuning; Voltage-controlled oscillators;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Electronics, Circuits and Systems, 2008. ICECS 2008. 15th IEEE International Conference on

Conference_Location

St. Julien´s

Print_ISBN

978-1-4244-2181-7

Electronic_ISBN

978-1-4244-2182-4

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/ICECS.2008.4674954

Filename

4674954