Designing a new high Q fully CMOS tunable floating active inductor based on modified tunable grounded active inductor

Abstract

A new Tunable Floating Active Inductor (TFAI) based on modified Tunable Grounded Active Inductor (TGAI) is proposed. Multi regulated cascade stage is used in TGAI to boost gain of input impedance and inductor value thus the Q factor enhancement obtained. The arrangement of Multi-Regulated Cascade (MRC) stage is caused the input transistor which determines AI self-resonance frequency to be as small as possible and it is free of body effect which is crucial in sub-micron technology. Compared to traditional CMOS spiral inductors, the active inductor proposed in this paper can substantially improve its equivalent inductance and quality factor. This TFAI was designed using the AMS 0.18 um RF CMOS process, which demonstrates an adjustable quality factor of 10∼567 with a 6∼284 nH inductance. The Q factor and value of active inductor is adjusted with bias current and flexible capacitance (varactor), respectively. The self-resonance frequency for both grounded and floating AI is about 6.2 GHz. The proposed active inductor also shows wide dynamic range and higher quality factor compared to conventional floating active inductor circuits.