Analysis, design and optimization of RF CMOS polyphase filters

Polyphase filters (PPFs) are an efficient solution for high accuracy quadrature generation in radio frequency (RF) CMOS design. Although there are some guidelines for design of RF CMOS PPFs, they give too much freedom. With layout considerations, optimization of RF CMOS PPFs cannot be reached by using analytical calculations because of many constraints and tradeoffs in the design. Thus, in design of RF CMOS PPFs, intensive trials and several design iterations are needed to reach given specifications. In this situation, a computer-aided analysis and design optimization tool for RF CMOS PPFs is of great help to the community of RF CMOS PPFs designers, especially for industrial projects that are under time-to-market pressures. However, such a dedicated tool has not been available until now, to the author's best knowledge. Focusing on computer-aided analysis and design optimization tools for RF CMOS PPFs, this dissertation has the following scientific contributions: PPFANA, a dedicated computer-aided software tool for analysis of the influences from the nonideal effects, namely, process tolerance, components mismatch on the quadrature accuracy of the RF CMOS PPFs, was developed by the author and presented in this dissertation. Physical design considerations for RF CMOS PPFs in system-on-a-chip (SoC) solution were proposed by the author through the analysis on the influences from parasitic effects in RF SoC. Silicon success of an RF CMOS PPF designed by the author for a low-IF Bluetooth receiver using Fraunhofer-IMS 0.6 µm CMOS process was achieved. PPFOPTIMA, a computer-aided synthesis and optimization tool for RF CMOS PPFs with dedicated worst-case simulation and Monte Carlo simulation toolboxes for verification of the performance of RF CMOS PPFs, was developed by the author and presented in this dissertation