An Inductive-bounce Enhanced Output-pad for CMOS UltraWideBand RF Applications

Resonant pad designs that tunes out parasitic pad capacitances is a difficult task in broadband wireless RF applications. This paper reports a novel CMOS output pad design using inductive ground bounce which is found to be suitable for ultrawideband RF applications. As pad parasitic capacitances as small as 0.35 pF becomes a significant ground leakage path for the ultrawideband frequency range of 3.1 GHz-10.6 GHz, inductive bounces from inductors as small as 1-2 nH can provide substantial impedance against this leakage. Simulations using the 0.18 mum TSMC process parameters indicate considerable output pad performance improvement when inductive bounce is used. Also, s- parameter simulations verify the results obtained.