CMOS VCO & LNA Implemented By Air-suspended On-chip RF MEMS Inductors

In this thesis, a CMOS 2.4 GHz Low noise amplifier (LNA) and Voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) was designed and simulated. These circuits were designed to operate in the 2.4GHz Industrial Scientific Medicine (ISM) band and to achieve Bluetooth and Wifi standard specifications. High-Q RF MEMS air-suspended circular spiral inductors are used in both circuits. High-Q inductors give the circuit better performance parameters including higher gain, lower noise figure and narrower bandwidth. The integration of these RF MEMS inductors onto RF circuit chips was carried out using the UV-LIGA technique and an additive pattern transfer technique such as electroplating. The LNA maintains a gain of 10dB and noise figure of 0.8dB at 2.4 GHz. With an input reflection coefficient of -10.8dB and output reflection coefficient of -12.93dB, the LNA matches successfully with 50Ω load at 2.4 GHz. The VCO maintains an average output swing of 1.95V in a frequency range of 2.94GHz to 2.2GHz achieving a 740GHz of tuning range.