학술논문

An Experimental Study on High-Frequency Substrate Noise Isolation in BiCMOS Technology
Document Type
Periodical
Source
IEEE Electron Device Letters IEEE Electron Device Lett. Electron Device Letters, IEEE. 29(3):255-258 Mar, 2008
Subject
Engineered Materials, Dielectrics and Plasmas
Components, Circuits, Devices and Systems
BiCMOS integrated circuits
Isolation technology
CMOS technology
Electrical resistance measurement
Circuit simulation
Circuit testing
Radio frequency
Measurement standards
Silicon germanium
Germanium silicon alloys
Bipolar CMOS (BiCMOS)
guard ring (GR)
substrate coupling
substrate noise isolation (SNI)
Language
ISSN
0741-3106
1558-0563
Abstract
In this letter, four substrate noise isolation structures in standard 0.18- $\mu\hbox{m}$ SiGe bipolar CMOS technology were investigated using $S$-parameter measurements. The experimental and simulated results on different isolation structures, such as triple-well p-n junction isolated walls, deep trench isolation, and double $\hbox{P}^{+}$ guard-ring structures, are presented. Each element in the equivalent circuits has been calculated or fitted based on the parasitic resistance, capacitance, and physical dimensions using the device simulator MEDICI and the measured results of the test patterns. The proposed structure B significantly reduced substrate noise below $-$70 dB up to 20 GHz. The proposed structure C with an extra triple-well junction achieved the best isolation at the lower frequency range, in which $\vert S_{21}\vert$ was less than $-$71 dB from 50 MHz to 10.05 GHz, and $-$56 dB from 10.05 to 20.05 GHz. The measured results showed an excellent agreement with the calculations. Structure B is good enough and is recommended for a general-purpose RF circuit design, whereas structure C can be used in a highly sensitive RF circuit block below 10 GHz.