A LOW-VOLTAGE, WIDE DYNAMIC RANGE CMOS FLOATING ACTIVE INDUCTOR

S. Sae-Ngow and A. Thanachayanont

Correspondence author:

S. Sae-Ngow
Department of Electronic Engineering, Faculty of Engineering
and Research Centre of Coininunication and Information Technology

King Mongkuts lnstitute of Technology Ladkrabang Chalongkrung Road, Bangkok 10520, Thailand Tel: 4-662 7373000 ext. 3309 Fax: +662 7392398

E-mail: s-saengow@yahoo.com

Topic: Circuits and Systems Keywords: analogue circuits, active

A LOW-VOLTAGE, WIDE DYNAMIC RANGE CMOS FLOATING ACTIVE INDUCTOR

S. Sae-Ngow and A . Thaimchayanont

Faculty of Engineering & Research Centre of Coininunication and Information Technology King Mongkut's Institute of Technology Ladkrabang, Bangkok 10520, T H A I L A N D Tel: +66 2 3264222, Fax: +66 2 7392398, E-mai1:s-saengow@yahoo.com, ktapinun@kmitl.ac.th ABSTRACT This paper prescnts a novcl low-voltage wide dynamic range high frequency floating activc inductor in a 0.35-pm CMOS technology. The proposed circuit exhibits 52-dB spurious-free dynamic range while dissipation 2 mW from a single 1.5 V powcr supply voltage. Using the proposed inductor, a 4"'-0rder bandpass filter was designed at 2GHz center frcquency and achieve Q of 25 with inputreferred 1P3 of-14 dBV.
1. INTRODUCTION High-frequency inductorless filters in standard CMOS tcchnology havc received a considcrablc attention reccntly [ I]-[7]. Thcsc filtcrs cmploy activc inductors realized by using simple transistor amplifier stage and exploit the devicc intrinsic capacitance to obtain very high frequency opcration. The advantages of using active inductor are large inductance valuc, high Q. small die area and tuncability. Howcvcr, thc main drawbacks of using active inductor arc rclativcly largc noisc and low dynamic range. This paper presents the design of a low-voltage wide dynamic rangc floating active inductor in a 0.35-pm CMOS tcchnology. Scction 2 describcs the basic grounded active inductor. Section 3 presents the proposed floating activc inductor and its simulation result. Section 4 describes the application of the floating inductor to the design of a 2-GHz 4'" -order bandpass filter. Finally, conclusion is given in section 5.

low, limiting the ability of the circuit to operate at very high frequencics. Note that, in a process where the threshold voltagcs are morc or less equal, Mp2 will be forced to operate in weak-inversion, rendering the circuit impractical for high frequency operation. The above problem can be mitigated, while retaining the low-voltage capability, by adding a DC lcvel shifter realizcd by a source-follower stage, M,,3,as shown in Fig. I(b). All transistors arc now operating in saturation region , thus their fT can be maximized. Thc simulated impedance of thc circuit in Fig.l(b) is gd.;? and ZL i n parallel, where ZL is equivalent to CgSI, given by ( I ) . Thc simulatcd inductance and its scries resistance are equal to the imaginary and rcal parts of ZL, respectively, given in (2) and (3) (assuming g,,, >> gd, and cg< Cgd 1, >>

2. GROUNDED ACTIVE lNDUCTOR

Fig. I(a) shows thc circuit diagram of a low voltagc ground active inductor reported in [ 5 ] . The circuit is realizcd by using thc common-source (Mni)and commondrain (MI,?) stages as the requircd transconductors and exploiting thc gatc source capacitancc of M,z for the required integrating capacitor. It may seem that the minimum powcr supply voltage requirc by the circuit in Fig. I(a) is only v(,s+2vOsAT . However, for the transistors to be in saturation, the circuit require VDSATZ < lV~llll- IVTH~I. modcrn CMOS processes, thc differcncc In i n thc threshold voltagc of p- and n-channcl dcvices is usually lcss than 50 mV, thus only a vcry small V I ~ S Ais ~ T allowcd. As a result, the transition frequency (fT) of MP?is Another advantagc of the circuit in Fig.l(b) is that it renders a fully-differential inductor realization, which increases the dynamic range. This will be reported in the fol lowing secti on.

3. FLOATING ACTIVE INDUCTOR

A floating activc inductor can be realizcd as shown in Fig.2. The circuit was simulated by iising HSPICE with parameters from a 0.35-pm digital CMOS technology. The circuit is opcrates under a I .5-V power supply voltagc. All transistors have the minimum channcl length and their

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=

widths are as followcr: W,=12 p m , Wz=25pm, and W3 32-~lin.The current sourccs are realizcd by using simple current mirrors. Fig. 3 shows the AC frcquency response of the simulated impedance: The circuit exhibits a seftresonant frcqucncy of 3.54-GHz while dissipating only 2 niW. Fig.. 4 show the inductancc value and series rcsistancc where the nominal inductancc valuc is 68 nH at 2 GHz and can be tuned by varying the bias current 1,. Fig. 5 show quality factor of active inductor where the maximum quality factor at 2-GHz is around 240. Fig. 6 dcinonstratcs thc Q-cnhancemcnt of the inductor, Whcrc incrcasing l 3 from I63 pA I85 pA changcs Q at 2-GHz li-om 1.487 to 34 respectively. The input-referred noise integrated over 500-M Hz bandwidth is 163.8 jtV,,,,,.The maximum vo1tag.c swing is 64.9invr,,,, with less than I % total harmonic distortion. Thus the spurious-free dynamic rnngc is around 52 dB. This valuc is largc than those rcportcd carlicr [ I]-[7].

6. REFERENCES [I] A. Karsilayan and R. Schaumann, A high-frequency high-Q CMOS active inductor with DC bias control, Proc. 43 IEEE Midwest Svnip. on Circitits ond S V S ~ ~ Ipp.486-489, A L I ~ . T~S, 2000. [2] A. Thanachayanont, A 1.5-V CMOS fully-diffcrcntial inductorless RF bandpass amplifier, Pmc. IEEE ISCAS 2001, Vol. I , pp. 49-52, 200 I . [3] Y. Wu, X. Ding, M. Ismail, and H. Olsson. Inductorless CMOS RF bandpass filter, E1ectronic.s Letters, Vol. 37, No. 16, pp. 1027-1028, Aug. 2001. [4] A. Thanachayanont and SSae-Ngow, Low Voltage High-Q VHF CMOS Transistor-only Active Inductor, Proc. 45 IEEE Midwest Sytiip. on Circiiits ond Systems, pp.486-489, Aug. 2002. [5] Lin, T.Y.K.; Paync, A.J.. Design of a low-voltagc. low-power, wide-tuning integrated oscillator, Proc. ISCAS2000. vol. 5, pp. 629-632,2000 [6] A. Thanachayanont and A. Payne, CMOS floating active inductor and its applications to bandpass filter and oscillator dcsigns, IEE Procs. Circirits. Devices ondSy.stems, Vol. 147, No. 1, pp. 42 4 8 , Feb. 2000. [7] M. Gruzing, A. Pascht, M. Berroth, A 2.5 V CMOS Differential active inductor with tunable L and Q for frequency up to 5 GHz, IEEE MTT-S Digest, pp.575-578,2001

4. FOURTH-ORDER BANDPASS FILTER

To demonstrate the potential of the proposed active inductor, a fully-differential 4l-order bandpass filter is realised by using thc doubly-terminatcd LC filtcr structure as shown i n Fig. 7. Thc inductor is rcalizcd by using thc floating active inductor. The filter was designed to have 2-GHz ccntcr frequency and 80-MHz bandwidth, with Rs = I O kR, RL =20 kR, C, = Cz =93 f , F Clz=7 fF, and LI = L: = 65 I1H. Thc ccntcr frequency of thc filtcr can be adjusted by varying thc inductancc of L I and L2..This can be obtained by varying the current I , as demonstrated in Fig.8, where I , is increased from 300 ;LA to 460 pA and the center frequency is increased from 1.89 GHz to 2.09 GHz. The quality factor of the filtcr can be adjusted by tuning the loss of tlic inductor. This is dcnionstratcd i n Fig.9 where tlic Q of thc filtcr is tuncd from 19 to 30 by varying the current I3 from 220 jiA to 163 CIA.Note that the passband gain of the filter approaches the ideal value of -6 dB when the inductor loss is very small (i.e. high-Q inductor) Linearity of the filter was also examined by a ~ p l y a two-tom signal at 1.96 GHz and 2 GHz. The third-order input-referred intercept point of the filter is about -14dBV as shown i n Fig. IO.

5. CONCLUSION
A new floating activc inductor has bccn proposed. Thc floating active inductor achicves 52 dB spurious-free dynamic range while dissipating 2-mW from a single 1.5-V powcr supply voltage .We believe that the enhanced linearity rcnders the active inductor inore practical for realising low-voltage low-power RF filter for wireless applications.

I
, ,

Figure 2. The proposed floadng active inductor.

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Ihanc

......

-. .

:*,..,----I,! ~

/
r

. .......

I;,..

Figure 3. Frequcncy response of floating active inductor.

Figure 6. Q-tuning of the floating active inductor by varying I,.

R,
180

100

160 140 120

80

60
1CU

m
80
60

40

40
20

20

Figure 7. Fully differcntial 4 -order bandpass filter.

0
1 1

FI<k;QUENCY (Gllz)

Figure 4.The simulated inductance value and series resistance of active inductor.

. . . . . . . .

300
250

200

5 3
.x
0

150 I .cI
100
11
CLjllCr:..

I.s
i i II

-.
. .

:I

50

Figure 8. Centre frequency tuning..of the liltcr.

2
3

FHEQUESCY (Gllr)

Figure 5. Quality factor of active inductor.

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2.4

Figure 9. Q-tuning of the filter.

dBV

I
-170
'

' UP3
I

-70

-60

40

-40

-30

-20

-10

10

Vin (dBVI

Figure IO. Simulated I1Pj of the filter.