Broadband and high-K passive balun using 16 sides geometry for silicon-based RFICs

Author

Hua Bin Zhang ; Min Cai ; Xiaoyong He ; Haijun Wu ; Zhengpin Li ; Tang, Fen

Author_Institution

Sch. of Electron. & Inf. Eng., South China Univ. of Technol., Guangzhou, China

Volume

50

Issue

4

fYear

2014

fDate

February 13 2014

Firstpage

288

Lastpage

290

Abstract

A broadband and high-<;i>K<;/i> monolithic passive balun for silicon-based radio frequency integrated circuits (RFICs) are presented. It utilises the top level thick Cu metal and adopts a 16-side geometry. The proposed balun is designed and fabricated with a 0.13-μm CMOS mixed-signal 1P6M process. The measured results show that the amplitude imbalance is <; 0.2 dB and the phase imbalance is within 4° from the frequency range of 0.1-7 GHz. Compared with the typical octagonal balun, the proposed design achieves the same coupling coefficients <;i>K<;/i> and attains an enhancement in the transmission efficiency <;i>S<;/i><;sub>21<;/sub> within the frequency range of 0.1-20 GHz, and the consumed chip area is reduced by 3%.

Keywords

CMOS integrated circuits; UHF integrated circuits; baluns; copper; elemental semiconductors; field effect MMIC; silicon; 16-side geometry; CMOS mixed-signal 1P6M process; Cu; RFIC; Si; amplitude imbalance; broadband passive balun; frequency 0.1 GHz to 20 GHz; high-K monolithic passive balun; phase imbalance; silicon-based radio frequency integrated circuits; size 0.13 mum; thick Cu metal; transmission efficiency;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Electronics Letters

Publisher

iet

ISSN

0013-5194

Type

jour

DOI

10.1049/el.2013.4083

Filename

6746287