Complementary Bodydriving - A Low-voltage Analog Circuit Technique Realized In 0.35um SOI Process

This thesis presents a study of several analog circuit primitives that utilize the body terminal as a signal port to achieve low-voltage operation and high performance. Several issues relating to low-voltage applications as well as the trends of technology scaling in the near future are presented. Principles of the body-driven transistor for both PMOS and NMOS in PDSOI technology are described, and critical design considerations are discussed. The design of low-voltage analog primitives (cascode current mirror and differential pair) are described and analyzed in detail. A discussion of the design and analysis of a 4-quadrant analog multiplier is also presented. Prototyping and testing procedures are discussed and the results of the prototyped circuits are evaluated. Finally, a summary of the work is presented along with insights gained toward future research

CMOS Non-tailed differential pair

A continuous-time complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor differential pair that does not require the traditional tail current source as a way to control the direct current and common-mode current is presented. Compared with a p-channel long-tailed pair, the proposed non-tailed solution operates under a higher maximum input common-mode voltage that includes (V-DD+V-SS)/2 even under low supply voltages. Experimental measurements on a prototype fabricated in a 0.35-mu m technology (with metal-oxide-semiconductor thresholds greater than 0.6V) confirm this behavior for supply voltages as low as 1.2V, whereas the long-tailed pair with the same technology offers the same capability only for supplies higher than 1.6V

Design of a 2.4 GHz High-Performance Up-Conversion Mixer with Current Mirror Topology

In this paper, a low voltage low power up-conversion mixer, designed in a Chartered 0.18 μm RFCMOS technology, is proposed to realize the transmitter front-end in the frequency band of 2.4 GHz. The up-conversion mixer uses the current mirror topology and current-bleeding technique in both the driver and switching stages with a simple degeneration resistor. The proposed mixer converts an input of 100 MHz intermediate frequency (IF) signal to an output of 2.4 GHz radio frequency (RF) signal, with a local oscillator (LO) power of 2 dBm at 2.3 GHz. A comparison with conventional CMOS up-conversion mixer shows that this mixer has advantages of low voltage, low power consumption and high-performance. The post-layout simulation results demonstrate that at 2.4 GHz, the circuit has a conversion gain of 7.1 dB, an input-referred third-order intercept point (IIP3) of 7.3 dBm and a noise figure of 11.9 dB, while drawing only 3.8 mA for the mixer core under a supply voltage of 1.2 V. The chip area including testing pads is only 0.62×0.65 mm2

Low-power Design of a Neuromorphic IC and MICS Transceiver

abstract: The first part describes Metal Semiconductor Field Effect Transistor (MESFET) based fundamental analog building blocks designed and fabricated in a single poly, 3-layer metal digital CMOS technology utilizing fully depletion mode MESFET devices. DC characteristics were measured by varying the power supply from 2.5V to 5.5V. The measured DC transfer curves of amplifiers show good agreement with the simulated ones with extracted models from the same process. The accuracy of the current mirror showing inverse operation is within ±15% for the current from 0 to 1.5mA with the power supply from 2.5 to 5.5V. The second part presents a low-power image recognition system with a novel MESFET device fabricated on a CMOS substrate. An analog image recognition system with power consumption of 2.4mW/cell and a response time of 6µs is designed, fabricated and characterized. The experimental results verified the accuracy of the extracted SPICE model of SOS MESFETs. The response times of 4µs and 6µs for one by four and one by eight arrays, respectively, are achieved with the line recognition. Each core cell for both arrays consumes only 2.4mW. The last part presents a CMOS low-power transceiver in MICS band is presented. The LNA core has an integrated mixer in a folded configuration. The baseband strip consists of a pseudo differential MOS-C band-pass filter achieving demodulation of 150kHz-offset BFSK signals. The SRO is used in a wakeup RX for the wake-up signal reception. The all digital frequency-locked loop drives a class AB power amplifier in a transmitter. The sensitivity of -85dBm in the wakeup RX is achieved with the power consumption of 320µW and 400µW at the data rates of 100kb/s and 200kb/s from 1.8V, respectively. The sensitivities of -70dBm and -98dBm in the data-link RX are achieved with NF of 40dB and 11dB at the data rate of 100kb/s while consuming only 600µW and 1.5mW at 1.2V and 1.8V, respectively.Dissertation/ThesisPh.D. Electrical Engineering 201

Power-efficient current-mode analog circuits for highly integrated ultra low power wireless transceivers

In this thesis, current-mode low-voltage and low-power techniques have been applied to implement novel analog circuits for zero-IF receiver backend design, focusing on amplification, filtering and detection stages. The structure of the thesis follows a bottom-up scheme: basic techniques at device level for low voltage low power operation are proposed in the first place, followed by novel circuit topologies at cell level, and finally the achievement of new designs at system level. At device level the main contribution of this work is the employment of Floating-Gate (FG) and Quasi-Floating-Gate (QFG) transistors in order to reduce the power consumption. New current-mode basic topologies are proposed at cell level: current mirrors and current conveyors. Different topologies for low-power or high performance operation are shown, being these circuits the base for the system level designs. At system level, novel current-mode amplification, filtering and detection stages using the former mentioned basic cells are proposed. The presented current-mode filter makes use of companding techniques to achieve high dynamic range and very low power consumption with for a very wide tuning range. The amplification stage avoids gain bandwidth product achieving a constant bandwidth for different gain configurations using a non-linear active feedback network, which also makes possible to tune the bandwidth. Finally, the proposed current zero-crossing detector represents a very power efficient mixed signal detector for phase modulations. All these designs contribute to the design of very low power compact Zero-IF wireless receivers. The proposed circuits have been fabricated using a 0.5μm double-poly n-well CMOS technology, and the corresponding measurement results are provided and analyzed to validate their operation. On top of that, theoretical analysis has been done to fully explore the potential of the resulting circuits and systems in the scenario of low-power low-voltage applications.Programa Oficial de Doctorado en Tecnologías de las Comunicaciones (RD 1393/2007)Komunikazioen Teknologietako Doktoretza Programa Ofiziala (ED 1393/2007

CMOS N-Dimensional M-Level Hysteresis Circuits and Possible Applications

Hysteresis is a natural phenomenon existing in many systems. Binary hysteresis is the simplest yet important model to study electronically generated hysteresis. Binary hysteresis circuits, the Schmitt trigger being an example, are widely used in reducing noise sensitivity, designing oscillators, generating chaotic signals, etc. A new concept, n-dimensional m-level multi-cell hysteresis is presented. A group of CMOS binary hysteresis circuits with full control which operate in all four quadrants is introduced. CMOS circuits, that give various one-dimensional multi-level hysteresis, in both current mode and voltage mode, are presented. Various combinations of adding forward and reverse binary hysteresis are demonstrated. CMOS circuits, in both current mode and voltage mode, that give two-dimensional multi-level multicell hysteresis, are designed. Further discussion is given on how to extend the results to more dimensions. Two-dimensional hysteresis is used to generate chaotic signals. A couple of areas where multi-cell hysteresis can be useful are suggested

A Novel 2.4GHz CMOS Up-Conversion Current-Mode Mixer

In this paper, a low-power up-conversion current-mode mixer, designed in the chartered 0.18-μm RFCMOS technology, is proposed to realize the transmitter front-end in the frequency band of 2.4 GHz. The proposed mixer can convert a 10 MHz intermediate frequency (IF) signal to a 2.4 GHz RF signal, with a local oscillator power of 2 dBm at 2.39 GHz. A comparison with conventional voltage-mode up-conversion mixer shows that this mixer has advantages of low voltage, low power consumption and high performance. Simulation results demonstrate that at 2.4 GHz, the circuit provides 6.5 dB of conversion gain and the input-referred third-order intercept point (IIP3) of 15.3 dBm, while drawing only 5.7 mA from a 1.2V supply voltage. The chip area is only 0.7 mm x 0.8 mm

Multiplicador analógico CMOS baseado na relação transcondutância X corrente

Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro Tecnológico. Programa de Pós-Graduação em Engenharia ElétricaO presente trabalho propõe um multiplicador operando em quarto quadrantes baseado em células que exploram a relação existente entre a corrente de saturação de um transistor MOS e a transcondutância de fonte. A vantagem da topologia proposta é simplicidade, operação com baixa potência, alta linearidade e corrente de saída com baixa sensibilidade dentro de uma mesma geração tecnológica. Os resultados de simulação associados aos experimentais demonstram a viabilidade da topologia escolhida para operação em baixa potência e baixa-tensão. A funcionalidade do sistema foi verificada através de simulação e da extração de parâmetros do protótipo implementado em tecnologia TSMC 0.35 m. Os resultados experimentais conseguidos com o protótipo indicam consumo de 1 mA, largura de banda de 1MHz e distorção harmônica total de 1% para uma corrente de entrada de 80 % do seu valor máximo sendo que a área de silício ocupada pelo multiplicador foi ao redor de 10.000 m2

A power-scalable variable-length analogue DFT processor for multi-standard wireless transceivers

In the Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiplexing (OFDM) based transceivers, digital computation of the Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT) is a power hungry process. Reduction in the hardware cost and power consumption is possible by implementing the DFT processor with analogue circuits. This thesis presents the real-time recursive DFT processor. Previously, changing the transform length and scaling the power could only be performed by digital Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) processors. By using the real-time recursive DFT processor, the decimation filter is eliminated. Thus, further reduction in the hardware cost and power consumption of the multi-standard transceiver is achieved. The real-time recursive DFT processor was designed in 180 nm CMOS technology. Results of device mismatch analysis indicate that the 8-point recursive DFT processor has a yield of 97.5% for the BPSK modulated signal. For the QPSK modulated signal, however, yield of the 8-point recursive DFT processor is 8.9%. Moreover, doubling the transform length reduces the average dynamic range by 3dB. Accordingly, the 16-point recursive DFT processor has a yield of 43.4% for the BPSK modulated signal. Power consumption of the recursive DFT processor is about 1/6 of the power consumption of a previous analogue FFT processor

Realization of Integrable Low- Voltage Companding Filters for Portable System Applications

Undoubtedly, today’s integrated electronic systems owe their remarkable performance primarily to the rapid advancements of digital technology since 1970s. The various important advantages of digital circuits are: its abstraction from the physical details of the actual circuit implementation, its comparative insensitiveness to variations in the manufacturing process, and the operating conditions besides allowing functional complexity that would not be possible using analog technology. As a result, digital circuits usually offer a more robust behaviour than their analog counterparts, though often with area, power and speed drawbacks. Due to these and other benefits, analog functionality has increasingly been replaced by digital implementations. In spite of the advantages discussed above, analog components are far from obsolete and continue to be key components of modern electronic systems. There is a definite trend toward persistent and ubiquitous use of analog electronic circuits in day-to-day life. Portable electronic gadgets, wireless communications and the widespread application of RF tags are just a few examples of contemporary developments. While all of these electronic systems are based on digital circuitry, they heavily rely on analog components as interfaces to the real world. In fact, many modern designs combine powerful digital systems and complementary analog components on a single chip for cost and reliability reasons. Unfortunately, the design of such systems-on-chip (SOC) suffers from the vastly different design styles of analog and digital components. While mature synthesis tools are readily available for digital designs, there is hardly any such support for analog designers apart from wellestablished PSPICE-like circuit simulators. Consequently, though the analog part usually occupies only a small fraction of the entire die area of an SOC, but its design often constitutes a major bottleneck within the entire development process. Integrated continuous-time active filters are the class of continuous-time or analog circuits which are used in various applications like channel selection in radios, anti-aliasing before sampling, and hearing aids etc. One of the figures of merit of a filter is the dynamic range; this is the ratio of the largest to the smallest signal that can be applied at the input of the filter while maintaining certain specified performance. The dynamic range required in the filter varies with the application and is decided by the variation in strength of the desired signal as well as that of unwanted signals that are to be rejected by the filter. It is well known that the power dissipation and the capacitor area of an integrated active filter increases in proportion to its dynamic range. This situation is incompatible with the needs of integrated systems, especially battery operated ones. In addition to this fundamental dependence of power dissipation on dynamic range, the design of integrated active filters is further complicated by the reduction of supply voltage of integrated circuits imposed by the scaling down of technologies to attain twin objective of higher speed and lower power consumption in digital circuits. The reduction in power consumption with decreasing supply voltage does not apply to analog circuits. In fact, considerable innovation is required with a reduced supply voltage even to avoid increasing power consumption for a given signal to noise ratio (S/N). These aspects pose a great hurdle to the active filter designer. A technique which has attracted the attention of circuit designers as a possible route to filters with higher dynamic range per unit power consumption is “companding”. Companding (compression-expansion) filters are a very promising subclass of continuous-time analog filters, where the input (linear) signal is initially compressed before it will be handled by the core (non-linear) system. In order to preserve the linear operation of the whole system, the non-linear signal produced by the core system is converted back to a linear output signal by employing an appropriate output stage. The required compression and expansion operations are performed by employing bipolar transistors in active region or MOS transistors in weak inversion; the systems thus derived are known as logarithmic-domain (logdomain) systems. In case MOS transistors operated in saturation region are employed, the derived structures are known as Square-root domain systems. Finally, the third class of companding filters can also be obtained by employing bipolar transistors in active region or MOS transistors in weak inversion; the derived systems are known as Sinh-domain systems. During the last several years, a significant research effort has been already carried out in the area of companding circuits. This is due to the fact that their main advantages are the capability for operation in low-voltage environment and large dynamic range originated from their companding nature, electronic tunability of the frequency characteristics, absence of resistors and the potential for operations in varied frequency regions.Thus, it is obvious that companding filters can be employed for implementing high-performance analog signal processing in diverse frequency ranges. For example, companding filters could be used for realizing subsystems in: xDSL modems, disk drive read channels, biomedical electronics, Bluetooth/ZigBee applications, phaselocked loops, FM stereo demodulator, touch-tone telephone tone decoder and crossover network used in a three-way high-fidelity loudspeaker etc. A number of design methods for companding filters and their building blocks have been introduced in the literature. Most of the proposed filter structures operate either above 1.5V or under symmetrical (1.5V) power supplies. According to data that provides information about the near future of semiconductor technology, International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS), in 2013, the supply voltage of digital circuits in 32 nm technology will be 0.5 V. Therefore, the trend for the implementation of analog integrated circuits is the usage of low-voltage building blocks that use a single 0.5-1.5V power supply. Therefore, the present investigation was primarily concerned with the study and design of low voltage and low power Companding filters. The work includes the study about: the building blocks required in implementing low voltage and low power Companding filters; the techniques used to realize low voltage and low power Companding filters and their various areas of application. Various novel low voltage and low power Companding filter designs have been developed and studied for their characteristics to be applied in a particular portable area of application. The developed designs include the N-th order universal Companding filter designs, which have been reported first time in the open literature. Further, an endeavor has been made to design Companding filters with orthogonal tuning of performance parameters so that the designs can be simultaneously used for various features. The salient features of each of the developed circuit are described. Electronic tunability is one of the major features of all of the designs. Use of grounded capacitors and resistorless designs in all the cases makes the designs suitable for IC technology. All the designs operate in a low-voltage and low-power environment essential for portable system applications. Unless specified otherwise, all the investigations on these designs are based on the PSPICE simulations using model parameters of the NR100N bipolar transistors and BSIM 0.35μm/TSMC 0.25μm /TSMC 0.18μm CMOS process MOS transistors. The performance of each circuit has been validated by comparing the characteristics obtained using simulation with the results present in the open literature. The proposed designs could not be realized in silicon due to non-availability of foundry facility at the place of study. An effort has already been started to realize some of the designs in silicon and check their applicability in practical circuits. At the basic level, one of the proposed Companding filter designs was implemented using the commercially available transistor array ICs (LM3046N) and was found to verify the theoretical predictions obtained from the simulation results