Digitally-Controlled Bondwire Inductor with High Quality Factor and Wide Tuning Range

A tunable bondwire inductor (TBI) with high-quality factor and wide tuning range is presented. The proposed TBI is fabricated on a single chip by combining a single-pole four-throw (SP4T) switch integrated circuit (IC) and four bondwire inductors on a package substrate. The SP4T switch IC is fabricated using 180 nm silicon-on-insulator (SOI) complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) technology. The fabricated TBI chip exhibits a 521% tuning range of inductance from 1.77 to 11 nH at 0.1 GHz and a relatively high-quality factor. To the knowledge of the authors, the results of this work demonstrate the best combined performance of inductance tuning range and quality factor.