Design and analysis of 8.2nH MEMS inductors for RF integrated filter circuit

Abstract

This paper describes the design and analysis of RF MEMS suspended inductors on silicon substrate that can be incorporated in the implementation of passive filter circuits for various trans-receiver applications. Design of radio frequency inductors are crucial where compact circuits and components are required in order to reduce the effective chip area and efficiently improve the performance of the system. In this paper a comparative study is done on three inductor designs for 8.2nH namely meander inductor, circular spiral inductor and square spiral inductor mounted on a high resistive silicon substrate. The effect of changes in the design topology of the inductor is done and its effect on some of the design parameters like quality factor and self resonant frequency are observed. Results show that the circular suspended inductor has the highest quality factor amongst the three i.e. 6.86 at 1 GHz but the self resonant frequency(SRF) of the designed circular suspended inductor is 4.17 GHz which is highest.