Electromagnetic design methods in systems-on-chip: integrated filters for wireless CMOS RFICs

Abstract

We present general methods for designing on-chip CMOS passives and utilizing these integrated elements to design on-chip CMOS filters for wireless communications. These methods rely on full-wave electromagnetic numerical calculations that capture all the physics of the underlying foundry technologies. This is especially crucial for deep sub-micron CMOS technologies as it is important to capture the physical effects of finite (and mediocre) Q-factors limited by material losses and constraints on expensive die area, low self-resonance frequencies and dual parasitics that are particularly prevalent in deep sub-micron CMOS processes (65 nm-0.18 μm. We use these integrated elements in an ideal synthesis of a Bluetooth/WLAN pass-band filter in single-ended or differential architectures, and show the significant deviations of the on-chip filter response from the ideal one. We identify which elements in the filter circuit need to maximize their Q-factors and which Q-factors do not affect the filter performance. This saves die area, and predicts the FET parameters (especially transconductances) and negative-resistance FET topologies that have to be integrated in the filter to restore its performance.