A Wideband On-Chip Directional Coupler Using a Negative Capacitance Circuit

We propose a wideband lumped element directional coupler using lossy negative capacitance (NCAP). NCAP provides a broadband resonance effect combined with passive inductors and capacitors in a circuit, enabling the coupler to exhibit wideband directivity performance. In addition, a 3-dB loss in the NCAP enhanced the bandwidth at the expense of the transmission gain, which decreased by only 0.3 dB. The proposed coupler was implemented in the IBM 7RF 180-nm CMOS technology. The size of the core chip is 1180 μm × 570 μm. The designed NCAP provides a capacitance of -13 pF using a supply voltage of 2.7 V and a current of 9.6 mA. The coupling was designed to be -10 dB at the center frequency of 1 GHz. The bandwidth was defined by the frequency range, which exhibited a directivity of more than 30 dB. The S-parameter measurements showed an absolute bandwidth ranging from 0.86 to 1.12 GHz, and a fractional bandwidth of 26%. In the bandwidth, the coupling had a 0.5-dB variation, the transmission loss was smaller than 2.14 dB, and the noise figures were 1.8-2.5 dB.