Spiral inductors get streamlined design

At 0.18-micron and smaller lithographies, CMOS offers better cost-versus-performance trade-offs than other technologies for single-chip products in applications such as wireless and Bluetooth. The process offers a high level of integration for digital and RF components but requires design tools that address the noise between the RF and digital subsystems. You traditionally use a field solver for on-chip inductor simulation or design verification. Field solvers predict the inductance value, L, and substrate loss as well as the value of Q-factor. However, traditional field-solver calculations of Q and substrate loss are too inaccurate for RF design.

To address this problem, Celestry has introduced RFXpert, a 3-D full-wave field solver, and RFPro-L, which generates an ac-equivalent circuit model. It takes as input s-parameters from either silicon measurement or RFXpert and provides a model for a wider frequency range than other solutions. The model is scalable and incorporates different Q-factor-extraction methods, including VCO-oriented Q-factor-extraction techniques.

RFXpert offers faster execution and a more accurate Q-factor calculation than traditional offerings. To achieve more accuracy, RFXpert uses precalibrated information for different processes to calculate the inductance and Q-factor.

RFXpert costs $25,000, and RFPro-L costs $40,000. Both prices are for a one-year license. RFXpert runs on Solaris and HP-UX platforms, and RFPro-L is available for Microsoft Windows.

Celestry Design Technologies Inc, 1-408-451-1210, www.celestry.com.