Extension of 0.18µm standard CMOS technology operating range to the microwave and millimetre-wave regime

Sharabi, Salah-Aldeen (2015) Extension of 0.18µm standard CMOS technology operating range to the microwave and millimetre-wave regime. PhD thesis, University of Glasgow.

Abstract

There is an increasing interest in building millimetre-wave circuits on standard digital complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technology for applications such as wireless local area networks (WLAN), automotive radar and remote sensing. This stems from the existing low cost, well-developed, high yield infrastructure for mass production. The overall aim of this thesis is to extend the operating range of 0.18um standard logic CMOS technology to millimetre-wave regime. To this end, microwave and millimetre-wave design, optimisation and modelling methodologies for active and passive devices and low noise circuit implementation are described. As part of the evaluation, new systematic and modular ways of making high performance passive and active devices such as spiral inductors, slow-wave coplanar waveguide (CPW) transmission lines, comb capacitors and NMOS transistors are proposed, designed, simulated, fabricated, modelled and analysed. Small-signal and noise de-embedding techniques are developed and verified up to 110 GHz, providing an increased accuracy in the device model, leading to a robust design at millimetre-wave frequencies. Reduced substrate losses resulting in increased quality factor are presented for optimised spiral inductor designs, featuring patterned floating shield (PFS), enabling improved matching network and a reduced chip area. Based on the proposed shielded slow-wave CPW, both the line attenuation and structure length are decreased, resulting in a more compact and simplified circuit design. An optimised transistor design, aimed at reducing the layout parasitic effects, was realised. The optimisation led to a significant improvement in the gain and noise performance of the transistor, extending its operation beyond the cut-off frequency (ft). By combining all the optimised components, low noise amplifiers (LNAs) operating at 25 GHz and 40 GHz were implemented and compared. These LNAs demonstrate state-of-the-art performance, with the 40 GHz LNA exhibiting the highest gain and lowest noise performance of any LNA reported using 0.18um CMOS technology. On the other hand, the 25 GHz LNA showed a comparable performance to other reported results in literature using several topologies implemented in CMOS technology. These findings will provide a framework for expansion to smaller CMOS technology nodes with the view of extending to sub millimetre-wave frequencies.

• Item Type: Thesis (PhD)
• Qualification Level: Doctoral
• Keywords: CMOS, microwave, millimetre-wave, transmission lines, Transistor optimisation, device modeling, spiral inductors, ft, fmax, noise figure, Low noise amplifiers
• Subjects: T Technology > TK Electrical engineering. Electronics Nuclear engineering
• Colleges/Schools: College of Science and Engineering > School of Engineering > Electronics and Nanoscale Engineering
• Supervisor's Name: Wasige, Dr. Edward
• Date of Award: 2015
• Depositing User: Salah-Aldeen Sharabi
• Unique ID: glathesis:2015-6699
• Copyright: Copyright of this thesis is held by the author.
• Date Deposited: 25 Sep 2015 09:29
• Last Modified: 05 Oct 2015 14:16
• URI: https://theses.gla.ac.uk/id/eprint/6699