A 0.1–5.0 GHz flexible SDR receiver with digitally assisted calibration in 65 nm CMOS

© 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A 0.1–5.0 GHz flexible software-defined radio (SDR) receiver with digitally assisted calibration is presented, employing a zero-IF/low-IF reconfigurable architecture for both wideband and narrowband applications. The receiver composes of a main-path based on a current-mode mixer for low noise, a high linearity sub-path based on a voltage-mode passive mixer for out-of-band rejection, and a harmonic rejection (HR) path with vector gain calibration. A dual feedback LNA with “8” shape nested inductor structure, a cascode inverter-based TCA with miller feedback compensation, and a class-AB full differential Op-Amp with Miller feed-forward compensation and QFG technique are proposed. Digitally assisted calibration methods for HR, IIP2 and image rejection (IR) are presented to maintain high performance over PVT variations. The presented receiver is implemented in 65 nm CMOS with 5.4 mm2 core area, consuming 9.6–47.4 mA current under 1.2 V supply. The receiver main path is measured with +5 dB m/+5dBm IB-IIP3/OB-IIP3 and +61dBm IIP2. The sub-path achieves +10 dB m/+18dBm IB-IIP3/OB-IIP3 and +62dBm IIP2, as well as 10 dB RF filtering rejection at 10 MHz offset. The HR-path reaches +13 dB m/+14dBm IB-IIP3/OB-IIP3 and 62/66 dB 3rd/5th-order harmonic rejection with 30–40 dB improvement by the calibration. The measured sensitivity satisfies the requirements of DVB-H, LTE, 802.11 g, and ZigBee.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio

Architectures and Circuit Techniques for High-Performance Field-Programmable CMOS Software Defined Radios

Next-generation wireless communication systems put more stringent performance requirements on the wireless RF receiver circuits. Sensitivity, linearity, bandwidth and power consumption are some of the most important specifications that often face tightly coupled tradeoffs between them. To increase the data throughput, a large number of fragmented spectrums are being introduced to the wireless communication standards. Carrier aggregation technology needs concurrent communication across several non-contiguous frequency bands, which results in a rapidly growing number of band combinations. Supporting all the frequency bands and their aggregation combinations increases the complexity of the RF receivers. Highly flexible software defined radio (SDR) is a promising technology to address these applications scenarios with lower complexity by relaxing the specifications of the RF filters or eliminating them. However, there are still many technology challenges with both the receiver architecture and the circuit implementations. The performance requirements of the receivers can also vary across different application scenario and RF environments. Field-programmable dynamic performance tradeoff can potentially reduce the power consumption of the receiver. In this dissertation, we address the performance enhancement challenges in the wideband SDRs by innovations at both the circuit building block level and the receiver architecture level. A series of research projects are conducted to push the state-of-the-art performance envelope and add features such as field-programmable performance tradeoff and concurrent reception. The projects originate from the concept of thermal noise canceling techniques and further enhance the RF performance and add features for more capable SDR receivers. Four generations of prototype LNA or receiver chips are designed, and each of them pushes at least one aspect of the RF performance such as bandwidth, linearity, and NF. A noise-canceling distributed LNA breaks the tradeoff between NF and RF bandwidth by introducing microwave circuit techniques from the distributed amplifiers. The LNA architecture uniquely provides ultra high bandwidth and low NF at low frequencies. A family of field-programmable LNA realized field-programmable performance tradeoff with current-reuse programmable transconductance cells. Interferer-reflecting loops can be applied around the LNAs to improve their input linearity by rejecting the out-of-band interferers with a wideband low in- put impedance. A low noise transconductance amplifier (LNTA) that operates in class-AB-C is invented to can handle rail-to-rail out-of-band blocker without saturation. Class-AB and class-C transconductors form a composite amplifier to increase the linear range of the input voltage. A new antenna interface named frequency-translational quadrature-hybrid (FTQH) breaks the input impedance matching requirement of the LNAs by introducing quadrature hybrid couplers to the CMOS RFIC design. The FTQH receiver achieves wideband sub-1dB NF and supports scalable massive frequency-agile concurrent reception

RF Frontend for Spectrum Analysis in Cognitive Radio

Advances in wireless technology have sparked a plethora of mobile communication standards to support a variety of applications. FCC predicts a looming crisis due to the exponentially growing demand for spectrum and it recommends to increase the efficiency of spectrum utilization. Cognitive Radio (CR) is envisioned as a radio technology which detects and exploits empty spectrum to improve the quality of communication. Spectrum analyzer for detecting spectrum holes is a key component required for implementing cognitive radio. Mitola's vision of using an RF Analog-to-Digital (ADC) to digitize the entire spectrum is not yet a reality. The traditional spectrum analysis technique based on a RF Front end using an LO Sweep is too slow, making it unsuitable to track fast hopping signals. In this work, we demonstrate an RF Frontend that can simplify the ADC's requirement by splitting the input spectrum into multiple channels. It avoids the problem of PLL settling by incorporating LO synthesis within the signal path using a concept called Iterative Down Converter. An example 0.75GHz-11.25GHz RF Channelizer is designed in 65nm Standard CMOS Process. The channelizer splits the input spectrum (10.5GHz bandwidth) into seven channels (each of bandwidth 1.5GHz). The channelizer shows the ability to rapidly switch from one channel to another (within a few ns) as well as down-converting multiple channels simultaneously (concurrency). The channelizer achieves a dynamic range of 54dB for a bandwidth of 10.5GHz, while consuming 540mW of power. Harmonic rejection mixer plays a key role in a broadband receiver. A novel order scalable harmonic rejection mixer architecture is described in this research. A proof-of-principle prototype has been designed and fabricated in a 45nm SOI technology. Experimental results demonstrate an operation range of 0.5GHz to 1.5GHz for the LO frequency while offering harmonic rejection better than 55dB for the 3rd harmonic and 58dB for the 5th harmonic across LO frequencies. While cognitive radio solves the spectrum efficiency problem in frequency domain, the electronic beam steering provides a spatial domain solution. Electronic beam forming using phased arrays have been claimed to improve spectrum efficiency by serving more number of users for a given bandwidth. A LO path phase-shifter with frequency-doubling is demonstrated for WiMAX applications

Configurable circuits and their impact on multi-standard RF front-end architectures

This thesis studies configurable circuits and their impact on multi-standard RF front-end architectures. In particular, low-voltage low-power linear LNA and mixer topologies suitable for implementation in multi-standard front-ends are subject of the investigation. With respect to frequency and bandwidth, multi-standard front-ends can be implemented using either tunable or wideband LNA and mixer topologies. Based on the type of the LNA and mixer(s), multi-standard receiver RF front-ends can be divided into three groups. They can be (tunable) narrow-band, wide-band or combined. The advantages and disadvantages of the different multi-standard receiver RF front-ends have been discussed in detail. The partitioning between off-chip selectivity, on-chip selectivity provided by the LNA and mixer, linearity, power consumption and occupied chip area in each multi-standard RF front-end group are thoroughly investigated. A Figure of Merit (FOM) for the multi-standard receiver RF front-end has been introduced. Based on this FOM the most suitable multi-standard RF front-end group in terms of cost-effectiveness can be selected. In order to determine which multi-standard RF front-end group is the most cost-effective for a practical application, a GSM850/E-GSM/DCS/PCS/Bluetooth/WLANa/b/g multi-standard receiver RF front-end is chosen as a demonstrator. These standards are the most frequently used standards in wireless communication, and this combination of standards allows to users almost "anytime-anywhere" voice and data transfer. In order to verify these results, three demonstrators have been defined, designed and implemented, two wideband RF front-end circuits in 90nm CMOS and 65nm CMOS, and one combined multi-standard RF front-end circuit in 65nm CMOS. The proposed multi-standard demonstrators have been compared with the state-of the art narrow-band, wide-band and combined multi-standard RF front-ends. On the proposed multi-standard RF front-ends and the state-of the art multi-standard RF front-ends the proposed FOM have been applied. The comparison shows that the combined multi-standard RF front-end group is the most cost effective multi-standard group for this application

RF Frontend for Spectrum Analysis in Cognitive Radio

Advances in wireless technology have sparked a plethora of mobile communication standards to support a variety of applications. FCC predicts a looming crisis due to the exponentially growing demand for spectrum and it recommends to increase the efficiency of spectrum utilization. Cognitive Radio (CR) is envisioned as a radio technology which detects and exploits empty spectrum to improve the quality of communication. Spectrum analyzer for detecting spectrum holes is a key component required for implementing cognitive radio. Mitola's vision of using an RF Analog-to-Digital (ADC) to digitize the entire spectrum is not yet a reality. The traditional spectrum analysis technique based on a RF Front end using an LO Sweep is too slow, making it unsuitable to track fast hopping signals. In this work, we demonstrate an RF Frontend that can simplify the ADC's requirement by splitting the input spectrum into multiple channels. It avoids the problem of PLL settling by incorporating LO synthesis within the signal path using a concept called Iterative Down Converter. An example 0.75GHz-11.25GHz RF Channelizer is designed in 65nm Standard CMOS Process. The channelizer splits the input spectrum (10.5GHz bandwidth) into seven channels (each of bandwidth 1.5GHz). The channelizer shows the ability to rapidly switch from one channel to another (within a few ns) as well as down-converting multiple channels simultaneously (concurrency). The channelizer achieves a dynamic range of 54dB for a bandwidth of 10.5GHz, while consuming 540mW of power. Harmonic rejection mixer plays a key role in a broadband receiver. A novel order scalable harmonic rejection mixer architecture is described in this research. A proof-of-principle prototype has been designed and fabricated in a 45nm SOI technology. Experimental results demonstrate an operation range of 0.5GHz to 1.5GHz for the LO frequency while offering harmonic rejection better than 55dB for the 3rd harmonic and 58dB for the 5th harmonic across LO frequencies. While cognitive radio solves the spectrum efficiency problem in frequency domain, the electronic beam steering provides a spatial domain solution. Electronic beam forming using phased arrays have been claimed to improve spectrum efficiency by serving more number of users for a given bandwidth. A LO path phase-shifter with frequency-doubling is demonstrated for WiMAX applications

Broadband RF Front-End Design for Multi-Standard Receiver with High-Linearity and Low-Noise Techniques

Future wireless communication devices must support multiple standards and features on a single-chip. The trend towards software-defined radio requires flexible and efficient RF building blocks which justifies the adoption of broadband receiver front-ends in modern and future communication systems. The broadband receiver front-end significantly reduces cost, area, pins, and power, and can process several signal channels simultaneously. This research is mainly focused on the analysis and realization of the broadband receiver architecture and its various building blocks (LNA, Active Balun-LNA, Mixer, and trans-impedance amplifier) for multi-standard applications. In the design of the mobile DTV tuner, a direct-conversion receiver architecture is adopted achieving low power, low cost, and high dynamic-range for DVB-H standard. The tuner integrates a single-ended RF variable gain amplifier (RFVGA), a current-mode passive mixer, and a combination of continuous and discrete-time baseband filter with built-in anti-aliasing. The proposed RFVGA achieves high dynamic-range and gain-insensitive input impedance matching performance. The current-mode passive mixer achieves high gain, low noise, and high linearity with low power supplies. A wideband common-gate LNA is presented that overcomes the fundamental trade-off between power and noise match without compromising its stability. The proposed architecture can achieve the minimum noise figure over the previously reported feedback amplifiers in common-gate configuration. The proposed architecture achieves broadband impedance matching, low noise, large gain, enhanced linearity, and wide bandwidth concurrently by employing an efficient and reliable dual negative-feedback. For the wideband Inductorless Balun-LNA, active single-to-differential architecture has been proposed without using any passive inductor on-chip which occupies a lot of silicon area. The proposed Balun-LNA features lower power, wider bandwidth, and better gain and phase balance than previously reported architectures of the same kind. A surface acoustic wave (SAW)-less direct conversion receiver targeted for multistandard applications is proposed and fabricated with TSMC 0.13?m complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) technology. The target is to design a wideband SAW-less direct coversion receiver with a single low noise transconductor and current-mode passive mixer with trans-impedance amplifier utilizing feed-forward compensation. The innovations in the circuit and architecture improves the receiver dynamic range enabling highly linear direct-conversion CMOS front-end for a multi-standard receiver

High Performance RF and Basdband Analog-to-Digital Interface for Multi-standard/Wideband Applications

The prevalence of wireless standards and the introduction of dynamic standards/applications, such as software-defined radio, necessitate the next generation wireless devices that integrate multiple standards in a single chip-set to support a variety of services. To reduce the cost and area of such multi-standard handheld devices, reconfigurability is desirable, and the hardware should be shared/reused as much as possible. This research proposes several novel circuit topologies that can meet various specifications with minimum cost, which are suited for multi-standard applications. This doctoral study has two separate contributions: 1. The low noise amplifier (LNA) for the RF front-end; and 2. The analog-to-digital converter (ADC). The first part of this dissertation focuses on LNA noise reduction and linearization techniques where two novel LNAs are designed, taped out, and measured. The first LNA, implemented in TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) 0.35Cm CMOS (Complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor) process, strategically combined an inductor connected at the gate of the cascode transistor and the capacitive cross-coupling to reduce the noise and nonlinearity contributions of the cascode transistors. The proposed technique reduces LNA NF by 0.35 dB at 2.2 GHz and increases its IIP3 and voltage gain by 2.35 dBm and 2dB respectively, without a compromise on power consumption. The second LNA, implemented in UMC (United Microelectronics Corporation) 0.13Cm CMOS process, features a practical linearization technique for high-frequency wideband applications using an active nonlinear resistor, which obtains a robust linearity improvement over process and temperature variations. The proposed linearization method is experimentally demonstrated to improve the IIP3 by 3.5 to 9 dB over a 2.5–10 GHz frequency range. A comparison of measurement results with the prior published state-of-art Ultra-Wideband (UWB) LNAs shows that the proposed linearized UWB LNA achieves excellent linearity with much less power than previously published works. The second part of this dissertation developed a reconfigurable ADC for multistandard receiver and video processors. Typical ADCs are power optimized for only one operating speed, while a reconfigurable ADC can scale its power at different speeds, enabling minimal power consumption over a broad range of sampling rates. A novel ADC architecture is proposed for programming the sampling rate with constant biasing current and single clock. The ADC was designed and fabricated using UMC 90nm CMOS process and featured good power scalability and simplified system design. The programmable speed range covers all the video formats and most of the wireless communication standards, while achieving comparable Figure-of-Merit with customized ADCs at each performance node. Since bias current is kept constant, the reconfigurable ADC is more robust and reliable than the previous published works

Apport de l'échantillonnage aléatoire à temps quantifié pour le traitement en bande de base dans un contexte radio logicielle restreinte

The work presented in this Ph.D. dissertation deals with the design of multistandard radio receivers that process signals with heterogeneous specifications. The originality of these research activities comes from the application of random sampling at the baseband stage of a software defined radio receiver. The purpose behind the choice of random sampling is to take advantage of its alias-free feature. The originality of this work is the analytic proof of the alias attenuation feature of the time quantized random sampling, the implementation version of the random sampling. A second contribution concerns also the analytic study of the simplest implementation version of the random sampling, the time quantized pseudo-random sampling (TQ-PRS). Theoretical formulas allow the estimation of the alias attenuation in terms of time quantization factor and oversampling ratio. Alias attenuation measurement permits to design the baseband stage of the proposed multistandard radio receiver architecture. The design concerns different configuration of the baseband stage according to the performances of the used analog-to-digital converters (ADC). The TQPRS allows decreasing the anti-aliasing filter order or the sampling frequency. The design of the baseband stage reveals a difference on the choice of the time quantization factor for each standard. The power consumption budget analysis demonstrates a power consumption gain of 30% regarding the power consumption of the analog baseband stage. This gain becomes 27.5% when the TQ-PRS clock and the digital canal selection stages are considered.Ces travaux de recherche s’inscrivent dans le cadre de la conception de récepteurs multistandard optimisés pouvant traiter des signaux à spécifications hétérogènes. L’idée est d’appliquer l’échantillonnage aléatoire au niveau de l’étage en bande de base d’un récepteur radio logicielle restreinte afin de tirer profit de son pouvoir d’anti-repliement. La nouveauté dans ces travaux est l’étude analytique de la réduction du repliement spectral par l’échantillonnage aléatoire à temps quantifié, candidat favorable à l’implémentation matérielle. Une deuxième contribution concerne aussi l’étude analytique de l’échantillonnage pseudo-aléatoire à temps quantifié (TQ-PRS) dont l’importance réside en sa grande facilité d’implémentation matérielle. Les formulations théoriques ont permis d’estimer l’atténuation des répliques en fonction du facteur de la quantification temporelle et du facteur du sur-échantillonnage. Les mesures de l’atténuation du repliement spectral ont permis de dimensionner l’étage en bande de base d’une architecture de réception multistandard. Le dimensionnement s’intéresse à différentes configurations de l’étage en bande de base régies par les performances du convertisseur analogique numérique (ADC) utilisé.Les travaux de recherche ont démontré que l’application du TQ-PRS au niveau de l’ADC mène soit à une réduction de l’ordre du filtre anti-repliement soit à une réduction de la fréquence d’échantillonnage. Un bilan global de la consommation de puissance a permis un gain de 30% de la consommation de l’étage en bande de base analogique. En tenant compte du générateur de l’horloge TQ-PRS et de l’étage de sélection numérique du canal, ce gain devient 25%