Integrated Inductor Design using ADS Momentum

A common passive component in RFIC design is the integrated inductor and designers are commonly interested in the total inductance as well as the quality factor, or Q. In this tutorial you will learn how to take the layout of an inductor that was generated using Cadence and import it into ADS Momentum where you can find the inductance and Q values for that particular layout. This tutorial can also be adapted to designing integrated transformers where one is also interested in the coupling factor, k.

It is assumed that the reader is familiar with the basic operation of Cadence and the basic operation of ADS.

Inductor Layout

• Begin by starting Cadence and creating a new layout cell view for the inductor. It is important that each inductor be given its own cell view because we will later be generating a time-domain model for using in future Cadence simulations and this model will be specific to a particular layout.
• Once you have created the new layout view, click on Options -> Display and change the X Snap Spacing and the Y Snap Spacing to the minimum spacing required by your fabrication process.
  • If you are using a Cadence Process Design Kit (PDK) this setting is likely to be set by default.
• Create the inductor layout making sure that it is DRC clean
  • If you instance a parameterized cell (p-cell) inductor, then you should flatten the layout by selecting Edit -> Hierarchy -> Flatten and then delete everything but the drawing layers from the design.

Exporting Layout to ADS

We will now export the inductor layout to a *.gds file in preparation for simulation and modeling of the inductor in ADS Momentum.

• In the Cadence CIW window click 'File -> Export -> Stream this brings up the Stream Out window.
  • Enter the name of the exported file in the Stream File.