Modeling of Passive Components for Radio Frequency Applications

This paper presents a fast and accurate modeling technique of passive components for analog RF integrated circuits on silicon. Key components such as a single interconnection, coupled lines and planar inductors were chosen to illustrate the advantageous features of the method. First, we present the analysis of a single interconnection as regards the frequency range and the silicon substrate conductivity. By using a Spectral Domain Approach to compute electric field distribution, we demonstrate the existence of a skin-effect in the silicon substrate of CMOS technologies. The equivalent model of a single transmission line including the complex loss mechanisms relevant to such a “skin-effect” mode is then extracted from geometrical and technological data. In the case of two coupled lines, the additional electric and magnetic coupling between segments of finite length is computed using the Integral Equation method and analytical formulation. Then, the simplicity and accuracy of the technique enable the modeling of more complex components such as RF planar inductors. Few time and memory resources are required to extract the fully scalable SPICE model of the component. Moreover, excellent agreement is observed between simulated results and measured S-parameters responses for all the devices.

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