Design and performance analysis of a Tunable Active Inductor Based Bandpass Filter for X Band Applications in 90 nm CMOS Process

This paper contains design and performance analysis of a tunable active inductor-based LC bandpass filter (BPF) by implementing a regulated cascode active inductor topology. The proposed filter exhibits a center frequency of 9.38 GHz, having a gain (S21) of 13.27 dB and 22.6 dB of noise figure @9.38 GHz. The DC power consumption is 2.57 mW. The proposed design has been passed through process corner analysis to evaluate the compatibility of the BPF in multifarious environments. Implementation of tunable active inductor enables the feasibility of tuning the center frequency and two of the approaches for tuning are followed. The biasing voltage-based tuning provides tuning of center frequency from 7.90 GHz to 12.05 GHz which basically X band frequency operation range. The capacitive tuning exhibits a tuning range of 6.66 GHz to 9.38 GHz, is an addition tuning property of the proposed design. Finally, the proposed BPF has been compared with other referred designs based on various performance parameters. The comparison shows that the BPF’s performance metrics outperform other designs in terms of gain, power consumption and tuning range of center frequency.