DESIGN AND OPTIMIZATION OF CONFIGURABLE PASSIVE COMPONENTS FOR CMOS MILLIMETER-WAVE INTEGRATED CIRCUITS

With the rapid growth of wireless communications, there is an increasing demand for low cost, low power consumption, high data rates and high density integrated circuits. The continuous scaling of CMOS technologies promises to achieve higher frequencies of operation in the millimeter-wave (mm-wave) frequency regime. To enable lager bandwidth for higher data rates wireless applications, many efforts have been focused on the design of mm-wave CMOS integrated circuits. The emerging mm-wave wireless commercial applications such as Wireless Hi-definition Video (60 GHz), automotive radar (77 GHz) and mm-wave imaging system (94 GHz) have brought new challenges in devices technology and systems. There is an ever increasing demand for multi-band and multi-mode integrated wireless communication systems which have the advantages of power and area savings. Therefore, flexible and configurable mm-wave on-chip components and circuits are needed to accommodate a wide variety of wireless communication standards. On the other hand, the first silicon success of the challenging mm-wave integrated circuits requires superior and robust design capabilities in cutting-edge technologies. To satisfy customers by providing them with the fastest time-to-market and the lowest total cost, the configurable multiband mm-wave solution is preferred. Design of on-chip passive components operating at millimeter wave frequencies presents several challenges due to the ohmic loss, parasitic inductance and capacitance. Therefore, it requires both an accurate model and electromagnetic (EM) simulation tools to characterize the passive components. The other challenge of design of mm-wave on-chip passives is process variations which can have a significant effect on the robustness of the passive components and circuits. Methodology to compensate and adjust for process variations is needed. Passives that can be configured after fabrication would be an attractive way to obtain accurate parameters and overcome effects of process variations. The configurable Multilayer Coplanar Waveguide (MCPW) based transmission lines offer convenient method to alleviate the problem of process variations and obtain accurate inductor values. This dissertation focuses on the design of mm-wave passive components and their applications. Model, EM simulation, and optimization of several novel MCPW-based configurable inductors are presented. A 77-GHz voltage controlled oscillator (VCO) and a 77-GHz receiver employing the configurable inductors have been realized. The 77-GHz VCO with MCPW-based configurable inductor exhibits low phase noise and wide frequency tuning range. The 77-GHz receiver achieves low power and state-of-the-art performance. The successful implementations of several individual configurable passive components, a 77-GHz VCO, and a 77-GHz receiver demonstrate the feasibility to achieve good performance and robust design with configurable passive components.Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering, May 201