WHITE PAPER

SUBSTRATE COUPLING ANALYSIS FOR RF CIRCUITS

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Abstract . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 SCA flow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Extraction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Data flow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 User interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 SIPP process description . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Comments and units . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Substrate layers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Well/buried layers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Diva rules for SCA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Substrate layers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 SCA flow properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Advanced Diva use . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Textual interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Port data description . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Command-line interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 A simple test structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Comparison to measurement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Low noise amplifier . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

TABLE OF FIGURES
Figure 1: Figure 2: Figure 3: Figure 4: Figure 5: Figure 6: Figure 7: Figure 8: Figure 9: Core modeling and extraction data flow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Verification flow for substrate coupling analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 SCA user interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 A substrate profile example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Substrate model including well and buried layers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 A simple layout test . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 SCA test and calibration structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 LNA extracted view from SCA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Substrate effects on the gain of the LNA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

LIST OF TABLES
Table 1: SCA results compared to measurement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

Substrate coupling analysis for RF circuits

Cadence Design Systems San Jose, California

Abstract
Substrate Coupling Analysis (SCA) of version 4.4.6 has a substantial capacity and functionality increase over previous versions. IES3 is used as its internal eld solver engine. Physical verication ow use model of SCA, as well as the command-line interface, provides the seamless and exible application of SCA. This article describes the internal ow and application examples of SCA in RF circuits to help the customer use SCA more effectively.

1 Introduction
Substrate coupling analysis has recently become both an intensive research topic and emerging commercial EDA demand in mixed-signal and RF applications[3]. The traditionally assumed insulation between devices, because of high resistivity and carefully designed junctions, is disappearing to a point where coupling between devices should be carefully analyzed. Degradation of noise characteristics in RF circuits due to such coupling and susceptibility of analog circuits to wide-range swings of digital signals are the main concerns. The features of this release of Cadence SCA can be summerized as follows: 1. A brand-new efcient eld solver SCA uses a core Poissons equation eld solver called IES3 that uses efcient multilayer Greens functions and matrix compression and solving engine. This eld solver gives sufcient extraction accuracy and speed[2, 1]. 2. Complete and exible substrate model SCA extracts both resistive and capacitive couplings inside the substrate. SCA also provides the exibility for the user to use customized junction models in buried layers and wells. For example, the user may worry about the lateral diffusion and thus they use their own model to represent the well junctions. 3. Seamless Cadence ow
We acknowledge the help and testing from Philips Semicondutor, Sunnyvale, USA and for their work on the evaluation circuit.
1

Substrate coupling analysis for RF circuits

Discretization (rectangles, triangles)

Method of Moments system matrix procedure

SIPP substrate profile

Greens function database Matrix Compression Final model (including junction and well models) Iterative Solving

Figure 1: Core modeling and extraction data ow SCA uses Virtuoso as the layout editor tool (and dfII database), Diva as the verication tool to extract the shapes. The nal model is generated specically for Spectre/SpectreRF. No conversion between databases and between simulators minimizes the errors introduced in those conversions. SCA also provides a textual interface with which the user can adopt SCA into different ows. 4. Standard process description (SIPP) SCA uses the standard process description le format, SIPP (Standard Interconnect Performance Parameter). SIPP format, championed by Si2 (http://www.si2.org), aims to standardize the process description for parasitic and substrate extraction purpose.

2 SCA ow
SCA software is comprised of three integral components: core modeling engine, front-end, and backend. In the front-end, one applies Diva rules to extract the geometry shapes and connectivities, which are then fed to the core modeling engine that generates the corresponding substrate model. In the backend, the substrate model is referred in the extracted view that is suitable for special netlisting code that assembles the substrate model into the nal netlist for simulation.

2.1 Extraction
SCA uses IES3 as the core solving engine that solves the underlying Poissons equation. Figure 1 shows the data ow of the modeling.

Substrate coupling analysis for RF circuits

2.2 Data ow

The substrate prole describes the physical layer structure and the parameters. This prole is used to generate the Greens functions that capture the electrical interactions between layers. Each port is discretized into panels. Each port is assumed to be of constant electric potential; the currents injecting into or received from substrate at each panel are different. For ports of rectangular shape, the panels are also rectangles. For ports of general polygon shapes, a built-in triangularization procedure discretizes the port into many triangular panels. The efciency of IES3 lies in the matrix compression technique that reduces the matrix solving to where is the total number of panels. The solving results are then used to construct the nal model that may include customized junction models.

2.2 Data ow
Figure 2 shows the verication ow for the substrate coupling analysis. The smaller dashed window depicts the core modeling engine whose only inputs are the process information and port information. The core engine is independent of the ow and thus can be used to adapt to other similar ows. The larger dashed window describes the entire Cadence SCA ow that includes the front-end and back-end. Interactive probing is not part of the delivered ow yet. The user may write his own SKILL scripts to aid the probing.

2.3 User interface

One generally applies SCA-ready Diva rules (as explained later) on the layout view, and then invoke the SCA on the extracted view. The form in Figure 3 will come up. The Run directory species the directory at which SCA runs the extraction engine. Temporary les will be created under that directory. Process le species the SIPP substrate description le. Relative le path of the process le is with regard to the run directory. Model name species the name used to represent the substrate. This parameter is used to distinguish substrate models that may exist in one circuit. The working frequency species the working frequency which is to determine the substrate capacitance. There are three levels of accurracy.

  

low. The main characteristics are: no substrate capacitance; uses oat(4 bytes) as data storage and solving; each port discretized to 9 panels; SVD compression and GMRES solving at 1e-2; in nal model, elements smaller than 1e-2 of the diagonal value pruned; Fast prototyping use for processes without substrate capacitances; medium. Main characteristics: substrate capacitance included; uses complex(16 bytes) as data storage and solving; each port discretized to 9 panels; SVD compression and GMRES solving at 1e-3; in nal model, elements smaller than 1e-3 of the diagonal value pruned; sufcient for most applications; high. Characteristics same as in medium except: each port discretized to 25 panels; no pruning in nal model. good for local scrutiny extraction of a a few ports. 3

Substrate coupling analysis for RF circuits

2.3 User interface

Layout in Virtuoso

Indentify substrate ports in design

DIVA

Add DIVA rules to create substrate ports

port data file

Geometry manipulation

discretization

SCA flow

SCA engine

Solving Engine

Process information

Modeling

Reduced substrate parasitic model file

Original schematic

Extracted view/layout

LVS

Interactive probing Simulate (user defined)

Figure 2: Verication ow for substrate coupling analysis

Substrate coupling analysis for RF circuits

Figure 3: SCA user interface If the background extraction button is pressed, then the extraction is performed in background; otherwise, the user can continue only after the extraction is nished. If the extraction is successful, a pcell representing the whole substrate model will be shown; otherwise, an error dialog box will notify the user of the extraction failure.

3 SIPP process description

SCA uses the portion of the SIPP le format to describe the substrate prole. SIPP format describes the layered structure that contains interconnect above the device and substrate under the device. SCA only parses the portion that denes the substrate structure.

3.1 comments and units

Any character from the pound sign to the end of line is treated as comment and will be ignored in the parsing. The units statement is to specify the units of measure. The syntax is as follows: units = { distance = m|cm|mm|um|nm|pm resistivity = ohm|mohm|uohm|nohm|pohm, m|cm|mm|um|nm|pm }

3.2 substrate layers

Each layer in the substrate is dened using the type substrate. For example, in Figure 4, L1 is the BP layer, and L2 is the P bulk. There can be as many layers as required with arbitrary user-specied names. The layers are assumed to be stacked top down from the substrate surface (which is considered the ground 5

Substrate coupling analysis for RF circuits

3.3 Well/Buried Layers

L1 L2

w1 pwell

w2 nwell
bl

BP

P bulk

Figure 4: An substrate prole example for interconnect capacitance extraction). Material type describes the layer as being either an oxide layer or a semiconductor layer. In the latter case, material type refers to the doping type. Type = substrate Material Type = p/n/oxide Name = <user defined name> thickness = starting from bottom of layer layer k = dielectric constant of this layer resistivity = resistivity of this layer

3.3 Well/Buried Layers

Each well in the substrate is dened using the type well. For example, w1=pwell, w2=nwell. Junction depletion capacitance parameter only uses Cj, the zero-bias junction capacitance. We recognize that most processes have their customized model for junctions and hence we provide a link between the process le and the Diva rule setup that allows to use a customized model rather than the simple capacitance model internally used. Each buried layer is dened using the type buried. Type = Well/Buried Material Type = p/n/oxide Name = <user defined name> thickness = starting from the capacitance ground plane for wells depth = starting from the capacitance ground plane to top of buried layer k = dielectric constant of this layer resistivity = resistivity of this layer cj = zero-bias junction capacitance

3.4 Example
The following is a sample SIPP le for SCA. It has a p channel stop layer of thickness 3um, epi layer of 7um, and bulk P substrate of 300um. The process also contains a P well of thickness of 5 um, and a buried layer of 2um thick. 6

Substrate coupling analysis for RF circuits

3.4 Example

# This is the sample process file for the substrate coupling analysis. # pound sign is for comment. # Define units units = { distance = um resistivity = ohm, cm } # P layer above the bulk substrate type = substrate material_type = p name = bp thickness = 3 k = 11 resistivity = 2 # Bulk substrate type = substrate material_type = p name = p_bulk thickness = 300 k = 11 resistivity = 20 type = well material_type = n name = nwell thickness = 3 k = 11 cj = 1e-9 type = buried material_type = n name = BL thickness = 2 depth = 1 k = 11 cj = 1e-12

Substrate coupling analysis for RF circuits

4 Diva rules for SCA

SCA runs on the extracted view created by the Diva extraction. This extracted view must have special properties specied for layers special for SCA purpose. In order to extend SCA capability into normal Diva extraction, Diva extraction must generate an extracted view that has:

 

special layers for substrate analysis only; each layer has shapes representing substrate ports and these shapes must have nets attached. These nets are usually shared with the nets at the bulk nodes of devices. special properties specifying the above layers and other properties. This section explains these two items and then suggests some advanced Diva rules writing techniques.

4.1 Substrate layers

A substrate port is a geometric denition of an active area (device, well, or substrate contact) from which and to which substrate coupling is considered important. Because a majority of current ow in the substrate occurs between ohmic substrate ties, a substrate port must be dened for every ohmic substrate tie (substrate contact or guard ring) in the design. An ohmic contact implies that the contact makes an ohmic, rather than capacitive, connection with the substrate (namely, p+ diffusion in a p-substrate or n+ diffusion in a n-substrate). Substrate ports must also be dened for every device that potentially injects current into the substrate or is sensitive to uctuations in the substrate potential. In other words, every device that is either an injector or a receiver of substrate coupling current must have an equivalent substrate port dened. Each port must have a net attached, although the net name can be shared with other ports. To assign the name in the Diva extraction, create a connected layer to represent the substrate ports for each device type. Typically, the substrate port is dened as an area that covers the boundary of the device. To simplify the rules deck, derive all the recognition layers for the ports on the same depth and then place them into a single substrate layer scaBulk using geomOr. You can then connect this layer to geomEmpty layers in the geomConnect statement and use these layers as the BULK layer in the extractDevice commands, as shown below: ; Merge the derived recognition layers together (scaBulk = (geomOr scaWell scaCap scaTaps scaDiode scaRes scaPmos scaNmos scaNpn scaPnp)) ; Create dummy connection layers (scaVia = (geomEmpty) (scaCond = (geomEmpty) ; Each port is assigned a net (geomConnect (via scaVia scaCond scaBulk)) ; Save the scaBulk layer (saveInterconnect (scaBulk "scab")) 8

Substrate coupling analysis for RF circuits

4.2 SCA ow properties

Sometimes, such as when you are adding depth to a port or creating ports for wells and buried layers, it is not possible to use only one substrate port layer. You can use as many layers as you wish to specify the ports, but each such layer should have the appropriate properties attached to it. Before you start SCA, the connections with substrate ports must be oating. After SCA is nished, the port nodes are then electrically connected to the substrate model generated during SCA. Some features are worth being mentioned:

 

Ports are allowed to have same nets. For example, you may create several guard rings that use the same net, ground. Prefer rectangular shapes to generic polygon shapes. The reason is that internal extraction engine discretizes rectangular shapes to smaller rectangular shapes while generic polygon shapes are discretized to triangles. Rectangular discretization is considered more efcient. For more detailed Diva rules for various devices, please refer to the users manual.

4.2 SCA ow properties

In order for SCA to run in the Diva ow, the cellview named scasubckt in analogLib must be accessible. Add the analogLib into the cds.lib. SCA also requires one property, subLayers, in the extracted view. Add this property to the extracted view with Diva rules by using the ivCallProc command. subLayers is a list of items that specify port properties used in the modeling. Each list item may be of one of the following forms:

  

(list layername) shapes on layername treated as substrate ports of interest, and depth assumed to be zero; (list layername depth) shapes on layername treated as substrate ports of interest, depth (numeric value) specifying the depth of those ports; (list layername modelname) If layername is found in the process prole as a well layer, then shapes on this layer will be treated as wells that use the junction model named modelname; if layername is found in the process prole as a buried layer, then shapes on this layer will be treated as buried layers that use the junction model named modelname. The difference between well and buried layer is that ports that fall in the wells will use the well as the reference.

Figure 5 shows the model that includes regular substrate ports, well, and buried layer. Each well is considered a port with regard to the bulk substrate, but for ports inside each well, the well is the reference node. A typical way of setting up the properties is like the following Diva code: x=(lambda (ids2) (if ids2->extracted 9

Substrate coupling analysis for RF circuits

4.3 Advanced Diva use

well

port buried layer

port

bulk node

Figure 5: Substrate model including well and buried layer (dbReplaceProp ids2->extracted "subLayers" "ilList" (list (list "scaport") (list "scadeep" 3.5) (list "nwell" "nwell") (list "BL" "buried"))))) (ivCallProc x)

In this example, scaport and scadeep are regular substrate layers with the former having depth of 0 while the latter having depth of 3.5u. Layer nwell is probably an N-well layer and its junctions with p-substrate is modeled by nwell. Layer BL is probably an buried layer and its junctions are modeled by buried. Note that these layers must be available for Diva writing.

4.3 Advanced Diva use

The exibility of Diva rule can be used to write more efcient rules for easy use. Here we give two examples. 4.3.1 Selection layer mechanism

In the Diva setup, one can apply the selection layer technique to select and localize areas that are of interest for SCA purpose. This can be achieved by using an LSW layer named scaport which before SCA running is a selection layer but after SCA running is reused as the substrate layer. By drawing a shape on the scaport layer, the user species that only substrate ports covered by the shape will be generated in extracted view and later be processed in the SCA extraction. This mechanism can reduce the model and speed up both extraction and simulation by eliminating areas that do not need SCA. 10

Substrate coupling analysis for RF circuits

4.3 Advanced Diva use

Normally this can be achieved by the following steps: rst ignore scaport and derive the scaBulk that denes all the substrate ports, and then use geomInside to derive the ports of interest: sca1 = (geomInside scaBulk scaport) then sca1 contains substrate ports on layer scaBulk and within the scope dened by shapes on scaport. After connectivities are created, we need to save the substrate layers such as: (saveInterconnect (sca1 "scaport")) All the shapes on sca1 will be saved on the scaport layer in the extracted view. 4.3.2 SCA switch

Most users incorporate SCA capabilities by modifying existing Diva rules. There is also a need to have a switch that turns on or off the SCA Diva rules. We introduce an example on how to reduce the impact on the device recognition code. First, subConn is a derived layer for 4-terminal device extraction such as: (extractDevice pGate poly("G") nsd("S" "D") subConn("B") "nmos ivpcell") Then the trick is to use switch and geomStamp to create a different subConn layer. A simple example is given as follows. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 psub = (geomBkgnd) (ivIf (switch "SCA?") then psub = (geomAndNot psub scaport) psub = (geomOr (geomInside scaBulk scaport) psub) subConn = (geomStamp psub pwell) else subConn = (geomStamp psub pwell)) (extractDevice pGate poly("G") nsd("S" "D") subConn("B") "nmos ivpcell") (ivIf (switch "SCA?") then scaBulks = (geomInside subConn scaport) (saveInterconnect (scaBulks "scaport")))

Major additions are in lines 2-6 and 9-11. Without SCA switch, subConn (see line 7), is the substrate layer, with the net name stamped from the P-well shapes, that provides as the bulk node for the NMOS transistor extraction. With the SCA switch, lines 2-6 break the subConn into two parts: those inside scaport for SCA purpose and the rest with net name stamped from the p-well. Note that in line 5, substrate ports will automatically be assigned a unique name if these ports do not overlap with pwell shapes. Lines 9-11 save the portion of subConn inside scaport with its already assigned net names. It can be seen that this mechanism shields the device extraction from the hassle of having to deal with SCA differently and reduces the work needed in modifying the original Diva rules.

11

Substrate coupling analysis for RF circuits

5 Textual interface
The command-line interface to invoking the SCA extraction engine only uses two les: the process le and the port data le. The Diva rules and user interface transparently generate the port data le, invoke the engine and put the results back to the extracted view. By using the command-line interface directly, the user has the exibility of using SCA engine without going through the whole verication ow. The user will also be able to adapt the engine into his own other ow.

5.1 Port data description

The port data le is a simple le that describes:

  

the unit for the shape description; possible customized model for particular layers; substrate port with its associated net name, port name, shape, and depth. A typical port le is as follows:

userUnits "micron" userModels "Pwell_a" "pwell" userModels "BL" "buried" net=2 layer=scaport depth=2 rect ((971.95 238.75) (981.95 370.65)) net=1 layer=scaport depth=2 poly ((742.1 239.3) (775.55 344.2) (840 239.3)) The userUnits section species the unit for the shape description. Only micron and meter are supported. The default value is micron. The UserModels sections specify the customized model for shapes that are on the rst parameter using the model name specied on the second parameter. For example, in the above port data le, shapes on layer Pwell a will use model name of pwell, and shapes on layer BL will use model name of buried. Any shapes that are not on the layers specied in userModels sections will be treated as regular substrate port. The rest of the port data le species the substrate ports. Each port starts with the net name followed by the layer name. Layer names should correspond to the substrate/well/buried layer names specied in the process le. The following depth species the port depth that sometimes gives signicantly different results. rect and poly specify the shape of the port, rectangular and polygonal respectively. A parenthesized data structure then follows to dene the actual shape. For rectangular shape, two points dene the left-lower corner and the upper-right corners respectively. For polygon shapes, each point becomes the polygon point in either clockwise or counter-clockwise direction.

5.2 Command-line interface

The command line is as follows:

12

Substrate coupling analysis for RF circuits

subx options where each option comprises of the switch and its value. The switches are: -procfile procfile_name -portfile portfile_name -modelfile modelfile_name -modelname modelname -acculevel {low|medium|high} -freq frequency -procfile species the SIPP le that describes the substrate layer structure; -portfile species the port data le that describes the substrate ports; -modelfile species the le to be created that contains the subckt model for the entire substrate; -modelname species the name of the subckt; -acculevel species the accuracy level: low, medium and high; -freq species the working frequency, which defaults to 1e9 Hz. Here is an example invocation: subx -procfile sample.proc -portfile port.data -modelfile substrate.scs \\ -modelname substrate -acculevel medium

6 Examples
We give one simple example to demonstrate the data le format and results. We then present some real applications.

6.1 A simple test structure

Figure 6 is a simple test structure to demonstrate many concepts. There are three layers: well layer Pwell a, regular port layer L0, and buried layer BL. Diva extraction assigns nets to all the shapes. The SCA run will place the scasubckt pcell into the extracted view. As is shown in Figure 6, terminals of the pcell are electrically connected to the ports. The internally created net on the well, although not shown explicitly in the gure, is still correctly connected to the pcell in the netlist. The process le uses the example in Section 3.4 except that the well name is changed to Pwell a. The Diva rule le is as follows:
; This is the test Diva file. ; sca: (drcExtractRules lo = geomOr( "LO" ) bl = geomOr( "BL" ) pwell = geomOr( "Pwell_a" ) sav = geomEmpty() (ivIf (switch "sca") then

13

Substrate coupling analysis for RF circuits

6.1 A simple test structure

Pwell_a

6 A1 A2

BL

BL 1

L0
B1 B2

Figure 6: A simple layout test

(geomConnect (via sav pwell pwell) ; net added on pwell (via sav lo lo) ; net added on lo (via sav bl bl) ; net added on bl ) x=(lambda (ids2) (if ids2->extracted (dbReplaceProp ids2->extracted "subLayers" "ilList" (list (list "Poly1") ; port (list "Pwell_a" "pwell") ; well layer (list "BL" "buried"))))) ; buried layer (ivCallProc x) saveInterconnect((lo "Poly1" ) (bl "BL") (pwell "Pwell_a")) ) )

In the run directory, SCA creates an intermediary le, port.data, that describes the entire port distribution. The port.data le is shown as follows:
userUnits "micron" userModels "Pwell_a" "pwell" userModels "BL" "buried" net=b2 layer=Poly1 depth=0 rect ((80.0 50.0) (100.0 60.0)) net=a2 layer=Poly1 depth=0 rect ((80.0 70.0) (100.0 80.0)) net=b1 layer=Poly1 depth=0 rect ((50.0 50.0) (70.0 60.0))

14

Substrate coupling analysis for RF circuits

6.2 Comparison to measurement

net=a1 layer=Poly1 depth=0 rect ((50.0 70.0) (70.0 80.0)) net=6 layer=Pwell_a depth=0 rect ((43.9 41.5) (74.0 86.9)) net=bl1 layer=BL depth=0 rect ((115.0 41.7) (130.3 87.7))

Note that although the depth of the bl1 port is specied as 0 in the port data le, since the layer name matches the buried layer name specied in the process le, the actual depth is obtained from the process le. The substrate model is generated as follows:
// This file is generated by the subX tool. subckt substrate (b2 a2 b1 a1 6 bl1 ref) // model inside well of net 6 on layer Pwell_a // Junction models for wells c0_well_6 (int_6 6) pwell area=1.366540e-09 perimeter=1.056000e-04 r1_b1_a1 (b1 a1) resistor r=2.103082e+03 r2_b1_int_6 (b1 int_6) resistor r=8.077988e+02 r3_a1_int_6 (a1 int_6) resistor r=8.077045e+02 // model of net bl1 on layer BL c4_buried_bl1 (int_bl1 bl1) buried area=7.038000e-10 perimeter=7.660000e-05 // Models at the top level r5_b2_a2 (b2 a2) resistor r=2.509657e+03 r6_b2_6 (b2 6) resistor r=1.943236e+03 r7_b2_int_bl1 (b2 int_bl1) resistor r=3.953767e+03 r8_b2_ref (b2 ref) resistor r=1.371588e+03 r9_a2_6 (a2 6) resistor r=2.066437e+03 r10_a2_int_bl1 (a2 int_bl1) resistor r=3.895700e+03 r11_a2_ref (a2 ref) resistor r=1.338032e+03 r12_6_int_bl1 (6 int_bl1) resistor r=4.478318e+04 r13_6_ref (6 ref) resistor r=3.044599e+02 r14_int_bl1_ref (int_bl1 ref) resistor r=3.982237e+02 ends substrate

Note that the substrate model corresponds to the structure shown in Figure 5.

6.2 Comparison to measurement

SCA assumes that each substrate layer is of homogeneous electrical properties. In reality, however, such is not the case. For example, the doping prole is actually a very complicated function of depth. Nevertheless, we can still use measurement to calibrate the substrate prole and obtain reasonable average values. Figure 7 is a test structure made specically for such calibration and comparison. Note that in this example, we implement a selection layer mechanism: only ports within the selection box are processed. Figure 7 shows a selection box that encloses three ports. We have achieved reasonable match between the measurement and extraction results, shown in Table 1. More important, these results demonstrate the consistency of SCA extraction. For a large class of port congurations, the results are within 4%.

15

Substrate coupling analysis for RF circuits

6.2 Comparison to measurement

Selection box

Figure 7: SCA test and calibration structure

Coupling pads 11-13 15-16 19-21 6-8

Extraction ( ) 141 262 299 333

Measurement( ) 146 250 294 339

Table 1: SCA results compared to measurement

16

Substrate coupling analysis for RF circuits

6.2 Comparison to measurement

Resistor Capacitor

Capacitor

Resistor NPN transistor

SCA pcell

Figure 8: LNA extracted view from SCA

30 without SCA with SCA 20

10

S21(dB)

10

20

30

40 0

0.5

1.5
frequency

2.5 x 10

3
9

Figure 9: Substrate effects on the gain of the LNA

17

Substrate coupling analysis for RF circuits

6.3 Low noise amplier

6.3 Low noise amplier

SCA can be used to both investigate the coupling noise and the guard ring effects. The RF circuits are very sensitive to substrate effects through the device bulk terminal. Figure 8 is a low noise amplifer that has nominal gain of 20dB at the operating frequency. Running SCA on this circuit generates quite different results for the gain of the amplifer, shown in Figure 9. Careful investigation reveals that the gain of the amplifer is very sensitive to the voltage of the bulk node of the main transistor. One way of reducing these effects is through biasing close to the main device. SCA tool helps to extract the substrate parasitics and debug the problematic circuits.

7 Summary
SCA provides a seamless substrate extraction and analysis capability within the Cadence custom RF IC design and verication ow of Virtuoso/Composer/Artist/SpectreRF. It uses an efcient Greens function database and eld solver to solve the complicated eld interactions inside the substrate. It supports Spectre and SpectreRF socket and direct netlisting and regular Diva functions. We have strived to provide a smooth Diva/SCA verication ow as well as the exibility of textual interface. SCA has been calibrated in real production process and used in production circuit verication. New features in the plan include:

  

Higher capacity to work in large-scale mixed-signal design and verication environment; Interactive probing to help design pinpoint the substrate problems. Integration with Assura product family.

References
[1] J. Zhao, W. Dai, S. Kapur, and D. Long. Efcient three-dimensional extraction based on static and full-wave layered greens functions. In Design and Automation Conference, pages 2249, San Francisco, June 1998. New York, NY, USA: IEEE.

[2] S. Kapur and D. Long. IES : A fast integral equation solver for efcient 3-dimensional extractions. In 37th International Conference on Computer Aided Design, Nov 1997. [3] X. Aragones, J.L. Gonzalez, and A. Rubio. Analysis and solutions for switching noise coupling in mixed-signal ICs. Kluwer Academic Publishers : Boston, 1999.

18

Cadence Design Systems, Inc. Corporate Headquarters 2655 Seely Avenue San Jose, CA 95134 800.746.6223 408.943.1234 www.cadence.com

2001 Cadence Design Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. Cadence and the Cadence logo are registered trademarks and how big can you dream? is a trademark of Cadence Design Systems, Inc. All others are properties of their holders. Stock #3488 10/01