170
Views
3
CrossRef citations to date
0
Altmetric
Articles

K- and Ka-band miniature CMOS balun with a single spiral coupled structure

, , &
Pages 1910-1918 | Received 22 Apr 2013, Accepted 21 Jul 2013, Published online: 13 Aug 2013
 

Abstract

This paper presents a CMOS wideband miniature balun operating over the full K- and Ka-bands. The balun is based on a single spiral coupled structure where two symmetric spiral lines are stacked vertically (i.e. broadside-coupled) in an antipodal manner. The proposed structure provides ultra-wideband balun performance while occupying a minimal chip area compared with conventional spiral baluns. In order to offset residual inductance of the spirals, a compensation capacitor is shunted at the end of an unbalanced input line, which further improves the bandwidth. The proposed balun is implemented in a bulk 0.13-μm CMOS process. The measured insertion loss is less than 6.5 dB from 14 to 40 GHz. The amplitude and phase imbalances are less than 1 dB and 10°, respectively, over the entire bandwidth. The balun occupies an area of only 0.0095 mm2, which, to the authors’ knowledge, is significantly smaller than any previously reported CMOS baluns at similar frequency bands.

Acknowledgement

This research was supported by Basic Science Research Programme through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Education (NRF-2010-0025551). The authors also thank IDEC for chip fabrication.

Reprints and Corporate Permissions

Please note: Selecting permissions does not provide access to the full text of the article, please see our help page How do I view content?

To request a reprint or corporate permissions for this article, please click on the relevant link below:

Academic Permissions

Please note: Selecting permissions does not provide access to the full text of the article, please see our help page How do I view content?

Obtain permissions instantly via Rightslink by clicking on the button below:

If you are unable to obtain permissions via Rightslink, please complete and submit this Permissions form. For more information, please visit our Permissions help page.