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A Millimeter-wave CPW CMOS on-chip bandpass filter using conductor-

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IEEE ELECTRON DEVICE LETTERS, VOL. 31, NO. 5, MAY 2010 399

A Millimeter-Wave CPW CMOS On-Chip Bandpass

Filter Using Conductor-Backed Resonators
L.-K. Yeh, Student Member, IEEE, C.-Y. Chen, Member, IEEE, and H.-R. Chuang, Senior Member, IEEE

Abstract—A novel millimeter-wave 35-GHz bandpass filter us-

ing coplanar waveguide structure is fabricated in a 0.18-μm
standard complimentary metal oxide semiconductor process. The
conductor-backed half-wavelength resonators are utilized to real-
ize stopband characteristics at desired frequencies. A series LC
resonant circuit can generate one transmission zero located at
58 GHz. It is also observed that the parasitic effect can create
another transmission zero at 80 GHz. Furthermore, the transmis-
sion zero at 66 GHz is designed with the use of a shorter conduc-
tor-backed resonator. The selectivity of the proposed filter is much
improved. Without including the dummy metal, the chip size of the
proposed filter is 0.225 × 0.55 mm2 . The good agreement between
simulation and measurement is obtained.
Index Terms—Bandpass filter (BPF), complimentary metal
oxide semiconductor (CMOS), coplanar waveguide (CPW),
millimeter wave. Fig. 1. Proposed CPW BPF.

I. I NTRODUCTION Liao et al. [6] propose a novel folded skill and reduces the
area of the conventional structure by at least 50%. Another

O WING to the advance in process technology, the single-

chip RF system-on-chip (RF-SoC) in complimentary
metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) process for the millimeter-
wave applications has the great possibility to be a reality in the
near future. The widespread use of the passive bandpass filters
(BPFs) makes it necessary for enhancing the performance of
the front-end circuits in radio communication system. In order
to pursue the RF-SoC for the millimeter-wave applications
with low-cost monolithically integrated CMOS RF front-end
circuitry, a coplanar-waveguide (CPW)-based CMOS RFIC on-
chip BPF is studied for this aspect. Millimeter-wave CMOS-
based BPFs with low insertion loss were earlier developed
by Sun et al. [1] and Miao and Nguyen [2]. However, inad-
equate selectivity is observed. Several literatures concerning
millimeter-wave CMOS on-chip filters were demonstrated [3]–
[5]. The microstrip lines are adopted to construct these BPFs.
With the considerations of low cost and high integration,
the BPF using uniplanar CPW structure and standard CMOS
process is becoming increasingly important in millimeter-wave
integrated circuits. It can offer several advantages over a con-
ventional microstrip line. There is no need for via holes, and it
has low radiation loss. These advantages make CPW ideally
suited for filtering tasks in millimeter-wave circuit design.
Manuscript received February 9, 2010. Date of publication March 29, 2010;
date of current version April 23, 2010. The review of this letter was arranged
by Editor A. Z. Wang.
L.-K. Yeh and H.-R. Chuang are with the Institute of Computer and Commu-
nication Engineering, Department of Electrical Engineering, National Cheng
Kung University, Tainan 701, Taiwan (e-mail: chuang_hr@ee.ncku.edu.tw).
C.-Y. Chen is with the Department of Electrical Engineering, National Uni-
versity of Tainan, Tainan 700, Taiwan (e-mail: cychen57@mail.nutn.edu.tw).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this letter are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/LED.2010.2043333
novel compact three-pole filter using coplanar meander line
resonators has been investigated in [7]. From [8], it was found
that stopband behavior is obtained by magnetically coupling
SRR particles to CPWs. A 30-GHz CPW on-chip filter with
series and shunt stubs was designed [9]. The attenuation rate
of the filter is 0.37 dB/GHz (calculated from 40 GHz with
−4.7 dB to 60 GHz with −12 dB). For the consideration of high
selectivity, the attenuation rate needs to be further increased.
In this letter, it begins with the introduction of a conventional
combline-type BPF. Then, the implementation of a 35-GHz
millimeter-wave CPW on-chip BPF with a 0.18-μm CMOS
standard is demonstrated. The combline-type structures based
on CPW are further investigated and applied to the design
of the millimeter-wave on-chip BPF, as shown in Fig. 1. The
compact size and high selectivity are addressed. Compared with
the previous work [9], the attenuation rate is much improved
up to 2.23 dB/GHz (calculated from 40 GHz with −5.5 dB to
60 GHz with −50 dB). The goals of reducing the filter size and
enhancing the selectivity are achieved.
II. D ESIGN M ETHODOLOGY OF THE P ROPOSED BPF
The combline-type filter can exhibit characteristics of low
loss and broad upper stopband. The resonators in this type
of filter are composed of multiple coupled transmission lines.
These specified length sections of transmission lines describing
the TEM mode of propagation are short-circuited at one end
and have various types of capacitive reactance at the open-
circuited end, as shown in Fig. 2. The coupling is accomplished
by the interaction of fringing fields between the resonator lines.
In addition, the larger the capacitive reactance, the shorter the
transmission line length. Therefore, a more compact filter struc-
ture with a wider rejection band can be realized by increasing

0741-3106/$26.00 © 2010 IEEE

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400
Fig. 2. Conventional combline-type BPF and CPW multiple-coupled-line
filter.
Fig. 3. Simulation results of a simple CPW coupled-line filter.
Fig. 4. Proposed BPF structure.
the capacitive reactance. In this letter, a general edge-coupled
CPW bandpass combline-type filter that uses two parallel-
coupled strip conductors is illustrated first in Fig. 3.
The capacitive reactance for each strip conductor is imple-
mented by using the CPW open-circuit structure. This filter can
provide a bandpass response. However, this capacitance is not
sufficiently large for compactness consideration, and the skirt
selectivity is not good enough. To overcome these problems, the
resonators of about a quarter-wavelength length are folded into
a meander shape to reduce the component’s size. The structure
of a capacitively loaded CPW line implemented by using the
metal–insulator–metal (MIM) capacitor is adopted to further
miniaturize the component’s size. As shown in Fig. 4, this MIM
capacitor can be approximately implemented using the parallel-
coupling structure between the tail section of the meander line
and the conductor-backed resonators. Based on the coupled
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IEEE ELECTRON DEVICE LETTERS, VOL. 31, NO. 5, MAY 2010
Fig. 5. Simulated insertion loss with different resonator lengths.
Fig. 6. Simulated transmission zeros produced by conductor-backed strip
lines.
mechanism, the transmission zero at the upper stopband is
caused by a series LC resonant circuit at the tail section of the
meander line. The center frequencies and transmission zeros of
the proposed filter simulated with different resonator lengths
are shown in Fig. 5. A combline-type millimeter-wave CPW
BPF with high selectivity can be realized.
III. S IMULATION AND M EASUREMENT R ESULTS
To demonstrate the applications of the studies in the previous
sections, a novel millimeter-wave BPF using CPW structure
operating at 35 GHz is proposed. The full-wave simulation
solver HFSS is used in this design. The transmission zeros
designed at different spectrum locations can improve the skirt
selectivity and provide a wider rejection band. Fig. 6 shows
the three transmission zeros located at 58, 66, and 80 GHz,
respectively. The combline-type filter with a series parasitic-
effect LC resonant circuit can generate one transmission zero
at the upper stopband which is located at 58 GHz. In addition,
the tail section of the meander line and the conductor-backed
resonator introduce a parasitic effect which creates a transmis-
sion zero at 80 GHz. Fig. 7 shows the HFSS-simulated current
distribution at 80 GHz. It is observed that the current flows
from the tail of the meander line to the ground and generates
the transmission zero (at 80 GHz) through the coupling path
by the parasitic effect. Furthermore, the transmission zero at
66 GHz is designed with the use of a shorter conductor-backed
resonator. The proposed structure with two different conductor-
backed resonators can provide a better stopband performance.
The designed filter is fabricated on a 0.18-μm CMOS multi-
layered structure with a substrate of 500-μm thickness. Fig. 8
YEH et al.: MILLIMETER-WAVE CPW CMOS ON-CHIP BANDPASS FILTER
Fig. 7. HFSS-simulated current distribution at 80 GHz.
Fig. 8. Chip microphotograph (chip size = 0.225 × 0.55 mm2 ).
Fig. 9. Simulation and measurement results.
shows the chip micrograph. Due to the complexity of the
0.18-μm CMOS multilayered structure, a way to reduce this
complexity is to evaluate effective dielectric constant and sim-
plify it into a single equivalent homogeneous substrate. Based
on the formulation in [10], the multilayer dielectric constant
can be calculated accurately. The dimensions of the proposed
filter are specified as follows: l1 = 475 μm, l2 = 540 μm,
w1 = 40 μm, g1 = 5 μm, g2 = 10 μm, and g3 = 9 μm. Without
the dummy metal, the chip size is 0.225 × 0.55 mm2 . The
rejections in the stopbands are all lower than −35 dB. Fig. 9
shows the simulation and measurement results. The designed
CPW filter with a center frequency of 35 GHz has an insertion
loss less than 4.5 dB and a return loss higher than 12 dB. To
demonstrate the phase response of the designed CPW filter, the
group delay within the passband is simulated and measured,
as shown in Fig. 9. A little higher insertion loss is due to the
desired goal of the higher selectivity of which the attenuation
rate is much improved up to 2.23 dB/GHz compared with
0.37 dB/GHz in [9]. Also compared with a conventional
combline-type filter, the proposed combline filter has a smaller
size with the size reduction up to 63.4% when operating at a
resonant frequency of 35 GHz.
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401
IV. C ONCLUSION
This letter presents the design and implementation of a
35-GHz millimeter-wave CPW CMOS on-chip BPF using a
0.18-μm standard CMOS process. Without the dummy metal,
the chip size of the proposed filter is 0.225 × 0.55 mm2 . The
concepts and performance measurements of a conventional
combline-type CPW filter require more elaborate works when
extended to the design of a millimeter-wave CMOS BPF. The
novelty of the device undertaken in this letter is to reduce
the filter size and enhance the selectivity performance. The
conductor-backed half-wavelength resonators are utilized to
realize stopband characteristics at desired frequencies and pro-
vide capacitive loading between the open-circuited end of the
folded line and the conductor-backed resonators. The combline-
type filter with a series parasitic-effect LC resonant circuit can
generate one transmission zero at the upper stopband which is
located at 58 GHz. Another transmission zero at 80 GHz results
from the parasitic effect. Furthermore, the transmission zero at
66 GHz is designed with the use of a shorter conductor-backed
resonator. The selectivity of the proposed CPW filter is much
improved. Compared with that in [9], the attenuation rate is
much improved up to 2.23 dB/GHz (calculated from 40 GHz
with −5.5 dB to 60 GHz with −50 dB). A good agreement
between simulation and measurement is obtained.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank the Chip Implementation
Center of the National Science Council and National Nano
Device Laboratories, Taiwan, for supporting the TSMC CMOS
process and chip measurement.
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