A fully automated design flow for planar inductors

Integrated inductors performances are difficult to model due to the parasitic effects present at high frequencies. Typically, RF designers use electromagnetic simulation during the design flow to tune their circuits until all designs requirements are fulfilled or use the set of, not always conveniently tuned, inductors provided by the foundries. In this paper, a multi-objective optimization algorithm is combined with a full-wave electromagnetic evaluator to obtain a tool for synthesis of inductors with optimum performance trade-offs. The automation of layout generation and simulation tasks are described in details.