Open access peer-reviewed chapter

Microwave Active Filter Design

Written By

Vincenzo Stornelli, Leonardo Pantoli and Giorgio Leuzzi

Submitted: 07 April 2016 Reviewed: 22 September 2016 Published: 11 January 2017

DOI: 10.5772/65917

From the Edited Volume

Microwave Systems and Applications

Edited by Sotirios K. Goudos

Chapter metrics overview

2,316 Chapter Downloads

View Full Metrics

Abstract

A simplified method for the project and design of microwave active filters is presented here. The presented design is based on the use of an active inductor that emulates an inductor behavior by implementing a passive variable phase- and amplitude-compensating network and amplifiers, forming a gyrator-C architecture. This method can be applied with success for the design of bandpass filters with very high performances in terms of integration and application from a few hundreds of MHz to tens of GHs with filter high dynamic range and frequency tuning capability.

Keywords

  • filters
  • active filter
  • active inductor
  • high dynamic range
  • gyrator

1. Introduction

Nowadays advancements in communications systems, in conjunction with the great increasing request for miniaturization and size reduction of wireless systems and devices, have led to an increase of performances and space reduction of modern communications systems and devices. Several RF building blocks have consequently been successfully implemented as integrated circuits (ICs) with different technologies. In this scenario, analog tunable filters working, in general, at RF and microwave frequencies still remain the most difficult part to be integrated in a single chip [118] due to requirements in input and output impedance matching, stability, and dynamic range. In fact, most commercial wireless receivers only use off-chip filters that are typically implemented with discrete components. This scenario leads to the occupation of a large area at the front-end. Even though the integrated version of filters has been presented in several papers, it must be noticed that in monolithic integrated microwave circuits (MMIC) most of the semiconductor area is occupied by passive elements, while active devices play a marginal role in area occupation. It is in fact generally known that passive inductors are largely responsible for the area occupation in IC. Classical spiral inductors, in fact, require large amounts of substrate area or air bridges and present a very limited bandwidth, a general high series resistance, and crosstalk problems. For this reason, it can really be important to replace spiral inductors with active circuits behaving like inductors, but characterized by a very reduced semiconductor area occupation. It is well known that an inductor can be simulated by a gyrator loaded by a capacitance; in the literature and in the commercial market, a lot of solutions have been proposed that use the gyrator principle to simulate an inductive behavior at microwave frequency range [15, 16, 1832]. Analog filters using Active Inductors (AIs) are good candidates for high-frequency operation; therefore, considerable interest has been shown in their use in active filters. In this perspective, in particular, band-pass filters designed by means of active inductor, usually suffer from a very low dynamic range due to the combination of a high noise level introduced by the AI and the relatively low compression power level of the AI itself. For all these reasons, there are only a few commercial solutions available on the market based on active inductors. Moreover, complex arrangements with many transistors tend to degrade the stability, preventing their use in practical applications. All these considerations show how the availability of simple, stable AIs with relatively high-power handling is therefore a critical issue, for their use as a replacement for spiral inductors in integrated filters especially when high-order filters with tunable characteristics are required. In the following paragraph, we will see how filters using active inductors have good potential to operate at high frequency, with high dynamic range, maintaining a constant quality factor (Q) in tunable applications when coupled with varactors diode, so considerable amount of interest has been shown in their use. A very simple approach for the design of tunable, high-quality factor, stable active inductors by means of an active inductor is presented here.

Advertisement

2. The active inductor design

Generally, active filters suffer from a very low dynamic range (see Figure 1) [3353] due to the combination of a high noise level introduced by the AI and the relatively low compression power level of the AI itself. An interesting way to design active filters, in order to overcome this problem, is through the use of AI. The first high-Q AIs were reported over two decades ago, and the use of these inductors for the implementation of inductor-capacitor (L-C) resonator-type active filters was presented both in several papers and conferences.

Figure 1.

Dynamic range for an active filter.

However, as already mentioned, high-frequency active bandpass filters designed by means of AI usually suffer from a low dynamic range due to the combination of high noise level introduced by the AI and of low compression point of the AI itself, which limits the maximum handled power. Several kinds of AI have been proposed in the past [152], especially grounded inductors that are usually based on gyrator scheme loaded with a capacitor (Figure 2). With reference to Figure 2, the input voltage through the inverting amplifier (that can be based on a common-source stage) drives the loaded capacitor, producing a 90° delayed voltage; this in turn drives the output current through a noninverting transconductance, typically a source follower.

Figure 2.

A gyrator-based active inductor scheme.

From Figure 2 circuit, if we assume ideal amplifiers, the following equations can be derived [tcas]:

VC=gm1jωCVinE1
Iin=gm2VC=gm1gm2jωCVin=1jωLeqVinE2

Finally, the equivalent inductance of the gyrator-based active inductor can be expressed as:

Leq=Cgm1gm2E3

Eq. (3), of course, is valid only if the two amplifiers are ideal and zero phase delays and zero losses are present in the architecture. It is important to notice that if nonidealities in the amplifiers are considered, two unwanted effects appear: (1) a parasitic resistance (positive or negative) arises in series to the equivalent inductance; (2) the bandwidth of the inductive impedance becomes finite. Figure 3a shows that a phase relation between input less than 90° gives positive resistance, while a phase relation in excess of 90° causes a negative resistance: the AI can now be considered as in Figure 3b

Figure 3.

(a) AI voltage and current relations and (b) AI with series resistance.

If we were able to control both these phase relations, without acting on the bias condition of the amplifiers, the linearity of the active component of the gyrator will not be affected. This condition can be reached by the insertion of a suitable variable passive compensation network [35] (Figure 4).

Figure 4.

Block scheme of the active inductor with high dynamic range.

It has already been demonstrated in reference [35] that

Req=1gmAvarcosϕvar+ωRparCtotgmAvarsinϕvarLeq=1gmAvarsinϕvar+ωRparCtotgmAvarcosϕvarE4

From Eq. (4), it can be noticed that the phase of the compensating network must be such that the two addends cancel in the expression of the equivalent resistance, in the band of interest. This leads to a complex scenario. In order to simplify the design, a single active block AI and a compensation network can be also adopted as shown in Figure 5. In Figure 6, an equivalent circuit of the single active block AI [38] is shown. In this case, a simplified model of the capacitance gyrator with a single active block is shown.

Figure 5.

Block scheme of the proposed single active block active inductor.

Figure 6.

Simplified schematic model of the single-transistor AI.

An exact set of values of the resistor-capacitor (R-C) network gives a correct phase delay between input and output (voltage and current), minimizing the real part of the equivalent impedance. In the ideal case [38], the circuit input impedance is given by the following relation:

Zin=1+jωRCgm+jωCE5

Eq. (5) can be also written in a more simple way as real and imaginary parts as in the following:

ReZin=gm+ω2RC2gm2+ω2C2E6
ImZin=ωgmRCωCgm2+ω2C2E7

Now it can be seen that the input impedance of the network is not always inductive [38]. By analyzing the imaginary part, we notice that the imaginary part of the AI impedance has a zero in ω = 0, and it is always positive only if:

gmR>1E8

The last is a very important condition if we want to obtain an inductive behavior. By considering also the amplifier block parasitic, we obtain the real and imaginary part of the input impedance of the single transistor (common emitter stage as the transconductance amplifier) gyrator as shown in Figures 7 and 8.

Figure 7.

Real and imaginary part of the input impedance of the single transistor gyrator.

Figure 8.

Complex input impedance of the AI.

Advertisement

3. Tunable microwave active filter example application

Thanks to the aforementioned approach, it is now possible to design an AI using, for example, medium-power bipolar transistor. The topology of the compensating network can be designed by means of an optimizer numerical software and the exact values of the network elements can be found by optimization, in order to take into account microstrip discontinuities and lines [38]. The ideal AI application is, of course, in monolithic integrated circuits, but as an example, a preliminary discrete design can be made on microstrip with discrete components. First, the AI design has to be performed, and consequently, a first-order (or greater) passband filter can be optimized (see Figure 9). As mentioned, the internal AI transconductance amplifier can be implemented by a bipolar transistor (e.g., the BFP420 bipolar junction transistor by Infineon in common-emitter configuration). Figure 10 shows a simulated standalone AI real and imaginary part, while in Figure 11, the Smith chart complex input impedance is shown. In this case, the topology of the compensating network, and its components value, has been chosen in order to have an inductive behavior with minimum nonnegative series resistance around 2500 MHz. The standalone AI Q is shown in Figure 12. The implemented filter response in terms of S-parameters is shown in Figure 13 showing the design success of microwave active filters by means of AI.

Figure 9.

AI-based LC filter.

Figure 10.

AI real and imaginary part.

Figure 11.

Complex input impedance of the active inductor.

Figure 12.

Quality factor of the active inductor.

Figure 13.

S-parameters of the designed active filter.

References

  1. 1. Hara, S., Tokumitsu, T., Aikawa, M. “Lossless broad band monolithic microwave active inductor,” IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques vol. 37, no. 12, pp: 1979–1984, December 1989.
  2. 2. Wu, Y., Ding, X., Ismail, M., Olsson, H. “RF bandpass filter design based on CMOS active inductors” IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems-II: Analog and Digital Signal Processing vol. 50, no. 12, pp: 942–949, December 2003.
  3. 3. Hara, S., Tokumitsu, T., Tanaka, T., Aikawa, M. “Broad band monolithic microwave active inductor and its application to miniaturized wide band amplifiers,” IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques, vol. 36, no. 12, pp: 1920–1924, December 1988.
  4. 4. Mukhopadhyay, R., Nuttinck, S., Woo, S. H., Kim, J. H, Lee, S. S., Lee, C. H., Laskar, J. Tunable active inductor, United States Patent Application Publication, no. US 2006/0170523 A1, appl. no. 60/649/221, Int. Cl. H03H 11/00, August 3, 2006.
  5. 5. Kaunisto, R., Alinikula, P., Stadius, K., Porra, V. “A Low-Power HBT MMIC filter based on tunable active inductors,” IEEE Microwave and Guided Wave Letters, vol. 7, no. 8, pp: 209–211, 1997.
  6. 6. Wu, Y., Ding, X., Ismail, M., Olsson, H. “CMOS active inductor and its application in RF bandpass filter,” IEEE Radio Frequency Integrated Circuits Symposium, pp: 655–658, 2004 .
  7. 7. Campbell, C. F., Weber, R. J. “Design of a broadband microwave BJT active inductor circuit,” Proceedings of the 34th Midwest Symposium on Circuits and Systems, vol. 1, pp: 407–409, 1991.
  8. 8. He, X., Kuhn, W. B. “A 2.5-GHz low-power, high dynamic range self-tuned Q-enhanced LC ¯ filter in SOI,” IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits, vol. 40, no. 8, 1618–1628, 2005.
  9. 9. Kaunisto, R., Alinikula, P., Stadius, K. “Q-enhancing technique for high speed active inductors,” IEEE International Symposium on Circuit and Systems ISCAS 1994, vol. 5, pp: 735–738, 1994.
  10. 10. Hsiao, C., Kuo, C., Ho, C., Chan, Y. “Improved quality-factor of 0.18-μm CMOS active inductor by a feedback resistance design,” IEEE Microwave and Wireless Components Letters, vol. 12, no. 12. pp: 467–469, 2002.
  11. 11. Lucyszyn, S., Robertson, I.D. “Monolithic narrow-band filter using ultrahigh-Q tuneable active inductors,” IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques, vol. 42, no. 12, pp. 2617–2622, 1994.
  12. 12. Thanachayanont, A. “Low-voltage Low-power high-Q CMOS RF bandpass filter” Electronics Letters, vol. 38, no. 13, pp. 615–616, 2002.
  13. 13. Cho, Y., Hong, S., Kwon, Y. “A novel active inductor and its application to inductance-controlled oscillator,” IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques, vol. 45, no. 8, pp. 1208–1213, 1997.
  14. 14. Sharman, R., A’ain, A. K., Azmi, M., Huang, M. Z. “Design approach for tuneable CMOS active inductor,” IEEE International Conference on Semiconductor Electronics ICSE 2004.
  15. 15. Lu, L. H., Hsieh, H. H., Liao, Y. T., “A wide tuning-range CMOS VCO with a differential tunable active inductor,” IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques, vol. 54, no. 9, pp. 3462 - 3468, 2006.
  16. 16. Mukhopadhyay, R., Park, Y., Yoon, S. W., Lee, C. H., Nuttinck, N., Cressler, J. D., Laskar, J. “Active-inductor-based low-power broadband harmonic VCO in SiGe technology for wideband and multi-standard applications,” IEEE MTT-S International Microwave Symposium Digest, Long Beach, CA. June 2005.
  17. 17. van Vliet, F. E., van der Bogaart, F. L. M., Tauritz, J. L., Baets, R. G. F. “Systematic analysis, synthesis and realization of monolithic microwave active inductors,” IEEE MTT-S International Microwave Symposium Digest, vol. 3, pp. 1659–1662, 1996.
  18. 18. Thanachayanont, A., A. Payne, “VHF CMOS integrated active inductor,” Electronics Letters, vol. 32, no. 11, pp. 999–1000, 1996.
  19. 19. Georgescu, B., Finvers, I. G., Ghannouchi, F. “2 GHz Q-enhanced active filter with low passband distortion and high dynamic range,” IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits, vol. 41, no. 9, pp. 2029 - 2039, 2006.
  20. 20. Soorapanth, T., Wong, S. S., “A 0-dB IL 2140 § 30 MHz bandpass filter utilizing Q-enhanced spiral inductors in standard CMOS,” IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits, vol. 37, no. 5, pp. 579 - 586, 2002.
  21. 21. Gao, Z., Yu, M., Ma, J. “Wide tuning range of a CMOS RF bandpass filter for wireless application,” IEEE Conference on Electron Devices and Solid-State Circuits, pp. 53–56, 2005.
  22. 22. Allidina, K., Mirabbasi, S. “A widely tunable active RF filter topology,” 2006 IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems, pp. 879–882, 2006.
  23. 23. Sae-Ngow, S., Thanachayanont, A. “A low-voltage, wide dynamic range CMOS floating active inductor,” TENCON 2003. Conference on Convergent Technologies for Asia-Pacific Region, vol. 4, pp. 1460–1463, 2003.
  24. 24. Mukhopadhyay, R., Yoon, S. W., Park, Y, Lee, C. H., Nuttinck, S., Laskar, J. “Investigation of inductors for digital Si-CMOS technologies,” 2006 IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems, pp. 3750–3753, 2006.
  25. 25. Sussman-Fort, S.E. “Design concepts for microwave GaAs FET active filters,” IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques, vol. 37, no. 9, pp. 1418–1424, 1989.
  26. 26. Sujin, S., Namsik, R., Heungjae, C., Yongchae, J. “Novel high-Q inductor using active inductor structure and feedback parallel resonance circuit,” IEEE Symposium on Radio Frequency Integrated Circuits (RFIC), vol. 1, pp. 467–470, 2007.
  27. 27. Andriesei, C., Goras, L., Temcamani, F., Delacressoniere, B. “CMOS RF active inductor with improved tuning capability,” International Semiconductor Conference, vol. 2, pp. 397–400, 2009.
  28. 28. Chun-Lee, L., A’ain, A., Kordesch, A. V. “CMOS active inductor linearity improvement using feed-forward current source technique,” IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques, vol. 57, no. 8, pp. 1915–1924, 2009.
  29. 29. Yongho, C., Songcheol, H., Youngse, K. “Monolithic VCO using a novel active inductor,” IEEE Microwave and Millimeter-Wave Monolithic Circuits Symposium, DOI: 10.1109/MCS.1996.506325, pp. 155–158, 1996.
  30. 30. Rohde, U. L., Poddar, A.K. “Active inductor oscillator and noise dynamics,” IEEE MTT-S International Microwave Symposium Digest (MTT), DOI: 10.1109/MWSYM.2011.5972933, pp. 1–4, 2011.
  31. 31. Yushi, Z., Fei, Y. “Subthreshold CMOS active inductors with applications to low-power injection-locked oscillators for passive wireless microsystems,” Circuits and Systems (MWSCAS), 2010 53rd IEEE International Midwest Symposium on, Aug. 2010.
  32. 32. Gamm, G. U. “Low power wake-up receiver for wireless sensor nodes,” IEEE Conference on Intelligent Sensors, Sensor Networks and Information Processing, vol. 1, pp. 121–126, 2010.
  33. 33. Pantoli, L., Stornelli, V., Leuzzi, G. “A low-voltage low-power 0.25 μm integrated single transistor active inductor-based filter,” Analog Integrated Circuits and Signal Processing, vol. 87, no. 3, pp. 463–469, 2016.
  34. 34. Pantoli, L., Stornelli, V., Leuzzi, G. “Low-noise tunable filter design by means of active components,” Electronics Letters, vol. 52, no. 1, pp. 86–88, 2016.
  35. 35. Leuzzi, G., Stornelli, V., Del Re, S. “A tuneable active inductor with high dynamic range for band-pass filter applications,” IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems II: Express Briefs, vol. 58, no. 10, pp. 647–651, 2011.
  36. 36. Pantoli, L., Stornelli, V., Leuzzi, G. “Class AB tunable active inductor,” Electronics Letters, vol. 51, pp. 65–67, 2015, ISSN: 0013-5194.
  37. 37. Branchi, P., Pantoli L., Stornelli, V., Leuzzi, G. “RF and microwave high-Q floating active inductor design and implementation,” International Journal of Circuit Theory and Applications, vol. 43, no. 8, pp. 1095–1104, Aug. 2015. ISSN: 0098-9886.
  38. 38. Leuzzi, G., Stornelli, V., Pantoli, L., Del Re, S. “Single transistor high linearity and wide dynamic range active inductor,” International Journal of Circuit Theory and Applications, vol. 43, no. 3, pp. 277–285, March 2015. ISSN: 0098-9886.
  39. 39. Pantoli, L., Stornelli, V., Leuzzi, G. “Tunable active filters for RF and microwave applications,” Journal of Circuits, Systems, and Computers, vol. 23, pp. 1450088, 2014. ISSN: 0218-1266.
  40. 40. Stornelli, V., Pantoli, L., Leuzzi, G. “High quality factor L-band AI-based band-pass filters,” Journal of Circuits, Systems, and Computers, vol. 22, 3, 2013. ISSN: 0218-1266.
  41. 41. Colucci, P., Leuzzi, G., Pantoli, L., Stornelli, V. “A third order integrable UHF bandpass filter using active inductors,” Microwave and Optical Technology Letters, Microwave and Optical Technology Letters, vol. 54, no. 6, pp. 1426–1429, June 2012.
  42. 42. Stornelli, V., Pantoli, L., Leuzzi, G. “An assessment on low voltage low power integrable single transistor active inductor design for RF filter applications” (Invited Paper), IEEE International Conference on Integrated Circuit Design and Technology (ICICDT), June 27–29, 2016.
  43. 43. Pantoli, L., Stornelli, V., Leuzzi, G. “Class AB gyrator-based active inductor.” In: IEEE Integrated Nonlinear Microwave and Millimetre-wave Circuits (INMMiC), 2015 International Workshop, Taormina, 29–30 September, 2015.
  44. 44. Pantoli, L., Stornelli, V., Leuzzi, G. “RF active circuit simulating a floating inductance.” In: IEEE, Integrated Nonlinear Microwave and Millimetre-wave Circuits (INMMiC), 2015 International Workshop, Taormina, 29–30 September, 2015.
  45. 45. Pantoli, L., Stornelli, V., Leuzzi, G. “A wideband class-AB tunable active filter.” In: IEEE, European Microwave Week 2015. EuMW 2015—Conference Proceedings; EuMIC 2015: European Microwave Integrated Circuits Conference, Parigi, 7–8 September, 2015.
  46. 46. Pantoli, L., Stornelli, V., Leuzzi, G. “A wideband class-AB tunable active filter.” In: IEEE, European Microwave Week 2015. EuMW 2015—Conference Proceedings; EuMC 2015: European Microwave Conference, Parigi, 7–8 September, 2015.
  47. 47. Pantoli, L., Stornelli, V., Leuzzi, G., Di Carlofelice, A. “A single transistor post selector active tunable filter for radio receivers applications.” In: IEEE Integrated Nonlinear Microwave and Millimetre-wave Circuits (INMMiC), 2014 International Workshop on. DOI: 10.1109/INMMIC.2014.6815106, 2014.
  48. 48. Pantoli, L., Stornelli, V., Leuzzi, G. “Low voltage high-order agile active filter for microwave applications.” In: IEEE. EuMC 2013: 43rd European Microwave Conference, pp. 1203–1206, 2013.
  49. 49. Pantoli, L., Stornelli, V., Leuzzi, G. “A single-transistor tunable filter for bluetooth applications.” In: EuMW 2012, Conference Proceedings—7th European Microwave Integrated Circuits Conference, EuMIC 2012, Amsterdam, October 29–30, 2012.
  50. 50. Pantoli, L., Stornelli, V., Leuzzi, G. “A single-transistor tunable filter for bluetooth applications.” In: Conference Proceedings—42nd European Microwave Conference, EuMC 2012. pp. 1269–1272, ISBN: 978-287487027-9.
  51. 51. Stornelli, V., Leuzzi, G., Pantoli, L., Del Re, S. “High dynamic range bandpass filters design based on active inductor.” In: Microwave Integrated Circuits Conference (EuMIC), 2011 European, Manchester, October 10–11, pp. 168–171.
  52. 52. Leuzzi, G., Stornelli, V., Del Re, S., Pantoli, L. “High quality factor integrable bandpass filter by using tunable active inductor.” In: Integrated Nonlinear Microwave and Millimetre-Wave Circuits (INMMIC), 2011 Workshop on, Vienna, April 18–19, 2011.
  53. 53. Leuzzi, G., Stornelli, V., Colucci, P., Pantoli, L. “Low-noise electronic circuit simulating the behavior of an inductance. 2014, US201414301526 20140611.

Written By

Vincenzo Stornelli, Leonardo Pantoli and Giorgio Leuzzi

Submitted: 07 April 2016 Reviewed: 22 September 2016 Published: 11 January 2017