Modeling of a Surface Acoustic Wave

Delay Line

BY
Ashish Shavarna
(7102254)

Supervisor:
Prof. A.B. Bhattacharyya

April-2011

SYNOPSIS

DEPARTMENT OF ELECTRONICS AND COMMUNICATION

ENGINEERING
 JAYPEE INSTITUTE OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
UNIVERSITY, NOIDA, UP
Abstract

SAW devices play a very important role in telecommunication industry as electric filters in mobile
phones and base stations. There are several new emerging applications for SAW devices as sensors
that may eventually equal the demand of this telecommunication industry. SAW based devices are
widely used as they can be implemented in small, rugged, light and power efficient modules. They
have outstanding reproducibility in performance from device to device.

An Interdigital Transducer (IDT) is the basic building block of a SAW device for which the Mason’s
Equivalent Circuit is widely accepted electrical equivalent circuit. Mason’s Equivalent Circuit is an
inherently scalar approximation which models the IDT structures as section of transmission lines,
coupled through a transformer to an electrical port. Below given is the schematic of uniform
interdigital transducer on piezoelectric substrate.

Our Project deals in detail about the modelling of a Surface Acoustic Wave delay line using VHDL-
AMS. The model will use Mason Equivalent Circuit of SAW delay line for calculating the overall
SAW filter response in the range of 100 MHz synchronous frequency. In this way, we can predict the
performance of our device in terms of the device parameters and hence optimize our device by
reducing the second order effects and other losses.

Tool

VHDL-AMS. SPICE

Software

IC Mentor graphics. HSPICE version 2008.03

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Work done before T1:

• VHDL AMS based simulation of a Mason Equivalent Circuit (MEC) Model of SAW delay
line with Aperture Optimization. The resulting plot the frequency response, Radiation
Conductance and Insertion loss was successfully obtained.

• VHDL AMS based simulation of simplified crossed field model for frequency response of a 9
finger pair Interdigital Transducer operating at 74.4MHz. The frequency response (magnitude
and phase) were successfully obtained.

• VHDL AMS simulation of modified frequency response expression derived by MEC Model
which considers the effect of source and load resistance on Frequency Response of given
SAW delay line.

Work done between T1 and T2:

• Studied Foster’s Reactance Theorem (For Network Synthesis) to design lumped Equivalent
Circuit for given characteristic impedance.

• Designed lumped equivalent circuit for characteristic impedance of metallized and

unmetallized region of a SAW finger pair in Mason Equivalent Circuit.

• VHDL AMS based simulation of modified MEC Model of SAW delay line which considers
finger reflections. The resulting plot for the frequency response (magnitude and phase) was
successfully obtained

• Comparison of the above obtained plot with those obtained for the simplified crossed field
Model. The frequency shift of about 0.2 MHz was observed in the modified MEC model.

Work to be done

• Working on implementation of modified MEC Model which takes into consideration the
acoustic reflection at the fingers of DIDT. It will reduce the second order effects observed in
SAW devices such as acoustic reflections.

• Design a layout of SAW delay line on COMSOL Multiphysics to simulate frequency

response and compare the result with those obtained on VHDL AMS. COMSOL
Multiphysics uses Finite Element Method to analyze the device.

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References

1. Smith W.R., Gerard H.M., Collins J.H., “Design of Surface Wave Delay Lines with
Interdigital Transducers” IEEE Trans. Microw.Theory Tech., vol. MIT-17, no. 11,
Nov. 1969.

2. Bhattacharyya A.B.; Tuli Suneet; Majumdar Swati; “SPICE Simulation of Surface

Acoustic Wave Interdigital Transducers”,Vol.42, No.4, pp.784-786, July 1995

3. Qiuyun Fu; Fischer W.J.; Stab H; "Simulate surface acoustic wave devices using
VHDL-AMS," ISSE 2003, pp. 95- 99, May 2003.

4. Wilson, W.C.; Atkinson, G.M., "Mixed Modeling of a SAW Delay Line using
VHDL," Behavioral Modeling and Simulation Workshop, Proceedings of the 2006
IEEE International, pp.34-39, Sept. 2006.

5. Tigli Onur; Zaghloul M.E.; “A Novel SAW Device in CMOS: Design, Modeling, and
Fabrication”, Vol.7, No.2, pp219-222, February 2007.

6. Colin Campbell “Surface acoustic wave devices for mobile and wireless
communications”, Academic Press Inc. 1998.

7. Hartmann, C.S., Jr.; Bell, D.T.; Rosenfeld, R.C.: "Impulse Model Design of Acoustic
Surface-Wave Filters," Microwave Theory and Techniques, IEEE Transactions on ,
vol.21, no.4, pp. 162- 175, Apr 1973.