Practical performance of planar spiral inductors

Inductors are essential elements for RF design. For RFIC design, bondwires, planar solenoidal and planar spiral inductors are available. Due to some limitations of bondwires and planar solenoidal inductors, planar spiral inductors are the most popular ones. Designers try to get accurate lumped element models for planar spiral inductors in order to be able to simulate the circuit performance correctly before the integrated circuit is manufactured. Planar spiral inductor measurement methods are discussed, and the comparison between lumped element model simulation results and experimental measurement results are given. The results of this study show that it is possible to model planar spiral inductors with lumped element circuit models, parameters of which can be calculated by basic, but accurate, expressions.