James Chu
Inder J. Bahl received his Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, in 1975. He has more than 40 years of experience working in the microwave field, researching and managing products, including microwave and millimeter-wave (mm-wave) integrated circuits (ICs), printed antennas, phased-array antennas, mm-wave antennas, and medical and industrial applications of microwaves. He joined the ITT Gallium Arsenide Technology Center in 1981 and launched numerous microwave and mm-wave gallium arsenide (GaAs) IC products for commercial and military applications. At Cobham (formerly ITT GTC/Tyco Electronics), he continued working on GaAs ICs as a distinguished fellow of technology until he retired in 2010. Through his research publications and books, he is well recognized worldwide in the microwave field. He is the author or coauthor of more than 160 research papers. He authored or coauthored 16 books and holds 17 patents. He is a Life Fellow of IEEE and a member of the Electromagnetics Academy.
Lumped Electronics for RF and Microwave circuits, Second Edition, By Inder J. Bahl, Artech House, 2023, ISBN-13: 978-1-63081-932-3, 569 pages, US$189.
This book contains the most up-to-date body of knowledge on lumped elements and their circuits. The author believes that this book will be accepted by researchers, practicing engineers, students, and professors. Overall, this book is a balanced and comprehensive look at lumped elements, including chapters dealing with current topics on baluns and transformers, lumped element-based passive and control components, and active circuits. The active circuits described are amplifiers, oscillators, mixers, multipliers, frequency dividers, and other passive circuits, including baluns, inductors, capacitors, filters, and circulators.
Chapter 1, “Introduction,” describes how the lumped elements for use at RF and microwave frequencies are designed. It explains that RF and microwave circuits use three basic lumped-element building blocks: capacitors, inductors, and resistors; lumped inductor transformers; and baluns. The author introduces the tremendous progress over the past two decades in lumped-element-based silicon (Si) RFICs working at mm-wave frequencies, the basic lumped elements used in monolithic microwave ICs (MMICs), and the integral parts of these elements.
Chapter 2, “Inductors,” deals with general information on inductors, analytical equations, methods of analysis, measurement techniques for modeling, and coupling between inductors, which includes the time constant, quality factor, and self-resonant frequency.
In Chapter 3, “Printed Inductors,” planar inductors on semiconductor substrates, such as Si and GaAs; printed circuit boards; and hybrid IC substrates are discussed. The chapter also discusses the resistive substrate, the use of a substrate shield, and the lumped spiral inductor types and their design, analysis, and optimization. Many design examples, tests, and simulations as well as temperature data for different types of substrates are presented.
Chapter 4, “Wire Inductors,” provides design information and covers practical aspects of several types of wire-wound inductors, and the basic theory of those inductors is described. It also includes many types of wires, such as bond wires, twisted wires, and models of wires and inductors.
Chapter 5, “Capacitors,” explains capacitor values, tolerances, thermal stability and the temperature coefficient, the quality factor Q, equivalent series resistance, series resonant frequency, parallel resonant frequency, the dissipation factor, the voltage rating, the current rating, the insulation resistance, the time constant, physical requirements, and cost.
Chapter 6, “Monolithic Capacitors,” covers microstrip capacitors and metal–insulator–metal capacitors and introduces capacitor models, electromagnetic simulation, and five types of high-density capacitors and three types of capacitor shapes. The last part of this chapter focuses on capacitor design considerations, including several techniques to enhance the quality factor of capacitors, tunability of capacitors, and power handling capability of capacitors.
Chapter 7, “Interdigital Capacitors,” describes the design and modeling of interdigital capacitors. Several techniques are discussed in this chapter to characterize interdigital capacitors, including approximate analysis, J-inverter network equivalent representation, full-wave methods, and measurement-based models. Interdigital capacitor design considerations are also discussed.
Chapter 8, “Resistors,” covers applications, such as terminations, isolation resistors, feedback networks, lossy impedance matching, voltage dividers, biasing elements, attenuators, gain equalizing elements, and stabilizing and damping resistors that prevent parasitic oscillations. This resistor discussion includes resistor basic characteristics, the types of resistors, and the resistor models.
Chapter 9, “Via Holes,” introduces via holes, wire bonds, ribbon bonds, and wraparound grounds. The chapter briefly discusses two types of via holes: one used for interconnections of metal layers (dielectric via) in a multilayer technology and the second used for a backside via hole ground.
Chapter 10, “Airbridges and Dielectric Crossovers,” introduces manufacturing techniques and three different analysis methods for airbridges and dielectric crossovers. It also explains both analytical and measurement techniques to develop equivalent circuit models for the airbridge.
In Chapter 11, “Inductor Transformers and Baluns,” the basic theory of inductor transformers is presented, with a brief discussion of the various types of such transformers. Three-port transformers having a 180° phase difference at the output ports, also known as baluns, are then discussed. The chapter covers basic transformer theory, spiral transformers on GaAs substrates, and Marchand baluns.
In Chapter 12, “Lumped Element Passive Components,” passive components, such as impedance transformers, hybrids, rat race couplers, directional couplers, power dividers, filters, and biasing networks based on lumped elements are described.
Chapter 13, “Lumped Element Control Components,” introduces control components, such as switches, phase shifters, attenuators, and limiters. The switch section covers nonreflective and reflective switches; series, shunt, and series—shunt switches; and many solid-state switches, such as field-effect transistor (FET), CMOS, high-electron mobility transistor, MIMIC, metal—semiconductor FET, and traveling wave switches. It also compares the switch technologies. The chapter then explains phase shifters, attenuators, and limiters in a similar way as it covers the switches section. If the reader wants to dive into more detail of those control device technologies, there is an excellent microwave control devices book, Microwave and RF Semiconductor Control Device Modeling, by R.H. Caverly, published by Artech House in 2016, which is a rich source of information.
Chapter 14, “Lumped Element Active Circuit,” provides an overview of the use of lumped elements in the design of active circuits, including amplifiers, oscillators, mixers, multipliers, frequency dividers, and other active components (using lumped baluns, inductors, capacitors, filters, and circulators). In this chapter, the discussion of active circuits is limited to the impact of the lumped elements. In the amplifier section, MMIC and RFIC amplifiers designed for many applications are discussed, and the selection of amplifier devices and tradeoffs are also briefly presented, with a few real-world examples included. In the power amplifier section, single-stage and multistage power amplifier design procedures and input—output matching techniques are briefly discussed. This section includes many power amplifier design and performance examples. In the oscillator section, the focus is on the Colpitts and Hartley and voltage control oscillator types as well as low-phase-noise design, and device selection is explained. In the mixer section, four types of mixers and a few examples of mixers on different frequencies are presented. The last section introduces frequency multipliers, doublers, triplers, quadruplers, and higher-order multipliers and dividers.
This book covers almost every lumped element there is and is the equivalent of a set of encyclopedias. Each subject starts from basics and moves to advanced technologies. The book also has many real-world examples with real-world design parameters, which gives designer good guidelines. Besides all this, this book lists 200 to 300 references in each chapter, which is a gold mine for researchers. Each chapter also has a wealth of researched, tested, and simulated data, tables, graphs, charts. All this is a mountain of treasure that will benefit any lumped element design engineer or researcher. To have this book on your bookshelf is equivalent to having a whole library at your fingertips.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MMM.2023.3277338