A 28-nm CMOS 1 V 3.5 GS/s 6-bit DAC with signal-independent delta-I noise DfT scheme

This paper presents a 3.5GSps 6-bit current-steering DAC with auxiliary circuitry to assist testing in a 1V digital 28nm CMOS process. The DAC uses only thin-oxide transistors and occupies 0.035mm2, making it suitable to embedding in VLSI systems, e.g. FPGA. To cope with the IC process variability, a unit element approach is generally employed. The 3 MSBs are implemented as 7 unary D/A cells and the 3 LSBs as 3 binary D/A cells, using appropriately reduced number of unit elements. Furthermore, all digital gates only make use of two basic unit blocks: a buffer and a multiplexer. For testing, a memory block of 5kbits is placed on-chip, which is externally loaded in a serial way but internally read in an 8x time-interleaved way. The memory is organized around 48 clocked 104-bit shift-registers. It keeps the resulting switching disturbances signal-independent and hence avoids inducing output non-linearity errors, even when a common power supply is shared with the DAC. This novelty allows reliable testing of the DAC core, while avoiding performance limitation risks of handling high-speed off-chip data streams. The DAC SFDR>40dB bandwidth is 0.8GHz, while the IM

Digital and Mixed Domain Hardware Reduction Algorithms and Implementations for Massive MIMO

Emerging 5G and 6G based wireless communications systems largely rely on multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) systems to reduce inherently extensive path losses, facilitate high data rates, and high spatial diversity. Massive MIMO systems used in mmWave and sub-THz applications consists of hundreds perhaps thousands of antenna elements at base stations. Digital beamforming techniques provide the highest flexibility and better degrees of freedom for phased antenna arrays as compared to its analog and hybrid alternatives but has the highest hardware complexity. Conventional digital beamformers at the receiver require a dedicated analog to digital converter (ADC) for every antenna element, leading to ADCs for elements. The number of ADCs is the key deterministic factor for the power consumption of an antenna array system. The digital hardware consists of fast Fourier transform (FFT) cores with a multiplier complexity of (N log2N) for an element system to generate multiple beams. It is required to reduce the mixed and digital hardware complexities in MIMO systems to reduce the cost and the power consumption, while maintaining high performance. The well-known concept has been in use for ADCs to achieve reduced complexities. An extension of the architecture to multi-dimensional domain is explored in this dissertation to implement a single port ADC to replace ADCs in an element system, using the correlation of received signals in the spatial domain. This concept has applications in conventional uniform linear arrays (ULAs) as well as in focal plane array (FPA) receivers. Our analysis has shown that sparsity in the spatio-temporal frequency domain can be exploited to reduce the number of ADCs from N to where . By using the limited field of view of practical antennas, multiple sub-arrays are combined without interferences to achieve a factor of K increment in the information carrying capacity of the ADC systems. Applications of this concept include ULAs and rectangular array systems. Experimental verifications were done for a element, 1.8 - 2.1 GHz wideband array system to sample using ADCs. This dissertation proposes that frequency division multiplexing (FDM) receiver outputs at an intermediate frequency (IF) can pack multiple (M) narrowband channels with a guard band to avoid interferences. The combined output is then sampled using a single wideband ADC and baseband channels are retrieved in the digital domain. Measurement results were obtained by employing a element, 28 GHz antenna array system to combine channels together to achieve a 75% reduction of ADC requirement. Implementation of FFT cores in the digital domain is not always exact because of the finite precision. Therefore, this dissertation explores the possibility of approximating the discrete Fourier transform (DFT) matrix to achieve reduced hardware complexities at an allowable cost of accuracy. A point approximate DFT (ADFT) core was implemented on digital hardware using radix-32 to achieve savings in cost, size, weight and power (C-SWaP) and synthesized for ASIC at 45-nm technology

High Performance Integrated Circuit Blocks for High-IF Wideband Receivers

Due to the demand for high‐performance radio frequency (RF) integrated circuit design in the past years, a system‐on‐chip (SoC) that enables integration of analog and digital parts on the same die has become the trend of the microelectronics industry. As a result, a major requirement of the next generation of wireless devices is to support multiple standards in the same chip‐set. This would enable a single device to support multiple peripheral applications and services. Based on the aforementioned, the traditional superheterodyne front‐end architecture is not suitable for such applications as it would require a complete receiver for each standard to be supported. A more attractive alternative is the highintermediate frequency (IF) radio architecture. In this case the signal is digitalized at an intermediate frequency such as 200MHz. As a consequence, the baseband operations, such as down‐conversion and channel filtering, become more power and area efficient in the digital domain. Such architecture releases the specifications for most of the front‐end building blocks, but the linearity and dynamic range of the ADC become the bottlenecks in this system. The requirements of large bandwidth, high frequency and enough resolution make such ADC very difficult to realize. Many ADC architectures were analyzed and Continuous‐Time Bandpass Sigma‐Delta (CT‐BP‐ΣΔ) architecture was found to be the most suitable solution in the high‐IF receiver architecture since they combine oversampling and noise shaping to get fairly high resolution in a limited bandwidth. A major issue in continuous‐time networks is the lack of accuracy due to powervoltage‐ temperature (PVT) tolerances that lead to over 20% pole variations compared to their discrete‐time counterparts. An optimally tuned BP ΣΔ ADC requires correcting for center frequency deviations, excess loop delay, and DAC coefficients. Due to these undesirable effects, a calibration algorithm is necessary to compensate for these variations in order to achieve high SNR requirements as technology shrinks. In this work, a novel linearization technique for a Wideband Low‐Noise Amplifier (LNA) targeted for a frequency range of 3‐7GHz is presented. Post‐layout simulations show NF of 6.3dB, peak S21 of 6.1dB, and peak IIP3 of 21.3dBm, respectively. The power consumption of the LNA is 5.8mA from 2V. Secondly, the design of a CMOS 6th order CT BP‐ΣΔ modulator running at 800 MHz for High‐IF conversion of 10MHz bandwidth signals at 200 MHz is presented. A novel transconductance amplifier has been developed to achieve high linearity and high dynamic range at high frequencies. A 2‐bit quantizer with offset cancellation is alsopresented. The sixth‐order modulator is implemented using 0.18 um TSMC standard analog CMOS technology. Post‐layout simulations in cadence demonstrate that the modulator achieves a SNDR of 78 dB (~13 bit) performance over a 14MHz bandwidth. The modulator’s static power consumption is 107mW from a supply power of ± 0.9V. Finally, a calibration technique for the optimization of the Noise Transfer Function CT BP ΣΔ modulators is presented. The proposed technique employs two test tones applied at the input of the quantizer to evaluate the noise transfer function of the ADC, using the capabilities of the Digital Signal Processing (DSP) platform usually available in mixed‐mode systems. Once the ADC output bit stream is captured, necessary information to generate the control signals to tune the ADC parameters for best Signal‐to‐Quantization Noise Ratio (SQNR) performance is extracted via Least‐ Mean Squared (LMS) software‐based algorithm. Since the two tones are located outside the band of interest, the proposed global calibration approach can be used online with no significant effect on the in‐band content

8-bit 1 Gs/s Adc Architecture And 4-bit Flash Adc For +10 Gs/s Time Interleaved Adc In 65nm Cmos Technology

Tez (Yüksek Lisans) -- İstanbul Teknik Üniversitesi, Fen Bilimleri Enstitüsü, 2015Thesis (M.Sc.) -- İstanbul Technical University, Instıtute of Science and Technology, 2015Haberleşme sistemlerinin veri aktarım sıklıkları ve bant genişlikleri sürekli olarak artmaktadır. Sayısal yarıiletken teknolojilerindeki gelişmeler, haberleşme sistemlerindeki işaret işleme kısımlarını sayısal domenine almıştır. Sayısal işaret işlemenin avantajları, ideal olmayan durumlara yüksek tolerans, gerçekleme kolaylığı, bir fonksiyonu gerçeklemek için gereken alanın dolayısıyla maliyetin düşük olması ve yeni teknolojilere taşınabilme olarak sayılabilir. Bu avantajlardan faydalanmak için analog işaretleri sayısal domene almada köprü görevi görecek yüksek hızlı analog-sayısal dönüştürücülere(ADC) ihtiyaç vardır. Kablolu ve kablosuz haberleşme teknolojilerinde 10 GHz'yi de aşan bant genişlikleri tek kanallı ADCleri bu iş için elverişsiz kılmaktadır. Zaman aralıklı ADCler gerek ulaşabilecekleri dönüştürme hızı gerek güç verimliliği açısından iyi bir aday olarak karşımıza çıkar. Zaman aralıklama, tek kanallı eş ADClerin sıra ile kullanılması esasına dayanmaktadır. Sıradaki örneği alan ADC, sıra tekrar kendisine gelene kadar bu örneği dönüştürür. Dolayısıyla toplam dönüştürme hızı, tek bir dönüştürücünün hızı ile kanal sayısının çarpımı kadar olmaktadır. Bu şekilde yüksek dönüştürme hızları elde edilebilir. Ayrıca bu şekilde tek kanal ADCler daha fazla hız elde etmek için güç bakımından verimsiz oldukları noktalara itilmez ve daha verimli yapılar ortaya çıkar. Zaman aralıklı ADClerdeki kanal uyumsuzlukları performansı düşürmektedir. Bu hatalar temel olarak dengesizlik, kazanç ve zamanlama uyumsuzluklarından ileri gelmektedir. Zamanlama hataları kestirilmeleri ve düzeltilmeleri noktasında diğerlerinden daha zorludur ve bu durum yüksek frekanslarda daha da zorlaşmaktadır. Zaman aralıklı ADClerdeki zamanlama hatalarının kestirilmeleri ve düzeltilmeleri güncel bir araştırma konusu teşkil etmektedir. Hataların kalibrasyonu ön planda veya arka planda yapılabilir. Arka planda yapılan kalibrasyon sistemin işlerliği ile ilgili herhangi bir sıkıntı yaratmaması ve değişen çevre şartlarına uyum sağlayabilme esnekliği açısından daha avantajlıdır. Zaman aralıklama hataları frekans spektrumunda çıkıntılar(spur) oluşturmaktadır. Bu çıkıntılar, güçlü olmaları durumunda alıcı kısmındaki devreleri sıkıştırma noktasına iterek modülasyonlu işaretlerin sezilmesini zorlaştırabilir veya giriş işaretini tamamen engelleyebilirler. Dolayısıyla kanal uyumsuzluk hataları özellikle kablosuz haberleşme sistemleri için sorun teşkil etmektedir. Bu sorunlardan kurtulmak için kanalları rastgele kullanmaya dayanan bir teknik önerilmiştir. Bu teknik ile kanallardan kaynaklanan hatalar çıkışa rastgele bir sırayla etki yaptıklarından gürültü gibi bir karaktere geçerler. Dolayısıyla frekans spektrumundaki çıkıntılar söndürülmüş olur. Tekniğin bir diğer avantajı arka planda çalışmasıdır. Ancak dikkat edilmelidir ki bu teknik bir hata düzeltme tekniği değildir, dolayısıyla sistemin işaretgürültü oranını iyileştirmemektedir. Kanal uyumsuzluk hatalarının kestirilmesi gibi, saat işaretlerinin dağıtılması da artan kanal sayısı ile zorlaşmaktadır. Ayrıca yüksek kanal sayısına sahip olan zaman aralıklı ADClerde saat işareti dağıtımının tükettiği güç yüksek seviyelere ulaşabilir. Belli bir dönüştürme hızı için kanal sayısını düşük tutmak ise kanal ADClerinin dönüştürme hızlarını arttırmak ile mümkündür. ADClerin hızları yüksek tutulurken aynı zamanda güç verimliliği de yüksek tutulmalıdır. Bu hedefler doğrultusunda 8-bit 1 GS/s bir çevrimde birden fazla bit dönüştüren bir SAR ADC yapısı önerilmiştir. Bir çevrimde birden fazla bit dönüştüren SAR ADCler, tek kanalda yüksek hızlara çıkmak konusunda sıkça kullanılan bir yöntem olarak karşımıza çıkmaktadır. Bunun yanında ilk üç en anlamlı bit bir flash ADC ile dönüştürüldüğünden önemli hız kazanımları elde edilir. Flash ADC çıkışında bir kod çözücü yapısı kullanılmaması da zaman kazanımında etkilidir. Önerilen ADC yapısında özgün bir dönüştürme algoritması kullanılmaktadır. Algoritma temel olarak, dönüştürme fazlarına fazladan seviyeler eklemek ve fazların aralıklarını kesiştirmek sureti ile devre bloklarının hata toleranslarını arttırmasına dayanmaktadır. Bu nedenle herhangi bir kalibrasyon sistemine ihtiyaç duyulmaz dolayısıyla güç tüketimi azaltılabilir. Bu yapının gerçeklenebilmesi için çoklu seviye üreten bir ön kuvvetlendirici önerilmiştir. Önerilen ön kuvvetlendirici yapısı nedeniyle, algoritmadaki farklı fazlar için tek bir ön kuvvetlendirici kullanılabilmektedir. Bu sayede farklı ön kuvvetlendiricilerden kaynaklanacak dengesizlik uyumsuzluklarının da önüne geçilmiş olur. Yüksek hızlı veri dönüştürücülerin gerçeklenmesindeki en etkili devre bloğu, kendisi de 1 bitlik bir ADC olarak sayılabilecek karşılaştırıcı devreleridir. Karşılaştırıcı devresinin hızı, doğruluğu ve güç tüketimi bir ADCnin ilgili performans parametrelerini doğrudan etkilemektedir. Yüksek karşılaştırma hızlı özgün bir gömülü ön kuvvetlendiricili karşılaştırıcı devre önerilmiştir. Yapı geleneksel dinamik sezme kuvvetlendiricisi devresi temel alınarak tasarlanmıştır. Ek olarak giriş farksal kuvvetlendirici bölümüne bir statik akım kaynağı bağlanmıştır. Bu şekilde dinamik karşılaştırıcı yapısına ön kuvvetlendirici gömülmüş olur. Yapı geleneksel yapılara nazaran, hız, dengesizlik, güç tüketimi ve geri tepme gürültüsü açısından iyileştirmeler içermektedir. 8-bit 1 GS/s bir çevrimde birden fazla bit dönüştüren SAR ADC yapısı, ilk 3 biti olabildiğince hızlı dönüştürmek için bir flash ADC yapısı kullanmaktadır. Flash ADC yapılarının önemli hız avantajlarına rağmen, karşılaştırıcı devrelerin dengesizlik ve geri tepme gürültüsü performansı düşürmektedir. Önerilen gömülü ön kuvvetlendiricili karşılaştırıcı devresi dengesizlik performansını ve geri tepme gürültüsünü iyileştirmektedir. Ancak geri tepme gürültüsünden kaynaklanan hataları tam olarak çözmek adına, referans gerilimleri de giriş işaretleri gibi örneklenebilir. Bu teknik ile karşılaştırıcı geri tepme gürültüsünün giriş ve referans gerilimi üzerindeki etkisi eşitlenmekte ve geri tepme gürültüsünün etkisi bertaraf edilmektedir. ADC girişleri örneklenerek geldiğinden ve örnekleme devrelerindeki bir hata doğrudan ADCye iletileceğinden bu devrelerin performansı çok önemlidir. Çapraz bağlamalı anahtar tekniği kullanılarak anahtarların doğrusallığı iyileştirilmiştir. Aynı zamanda çapraz bağlama tekniği anahtar yük enjeksiyonu hatasını giriş işaretinden bağımsız hale getirmektedir. Bu durum, yukarıda bahsedilen referans örnekleme tekniği ile birleştirildiğinde flash ADC için önemli bir doğruluk iyileştirmesi sağlamaktadır. ADC blokları ST Microelectronics 65 nm CMOS teknolojisinde tasarlanmış ve serimleri yapılmıştır. Serim sonrası benzetim sonuçları tasarımların ve kullanılan tekniklerin doğruluğunu göstermektedir. Tasarlanan ADC Haziran 2015'de üretime yollanmıştır. Kasım 2015'de ölçümlere başlanması planlanmaktadır.Data rate of communication systems constantly increasing . Rapid scaling of digital semiconductor technologies has moved the signal processing of these systems to digital domain. Therefore high-speed ADCs are required to form the bridge to take the analog signals in digital domain. Data rates exceeding 10 Gbps makes the use of single channel ADCs unfeasible on this purpose. A power efficient solution is time-interleaving. Time-interleaving relaxes the speed requirements on single channel ADCs and lets designers to focus on power efficiency of the ADC. Channel mismatches in time-interleaved ADCs causes performance degradation. Errors arise mainly due to offset, gain and timing mismatch of channels. Among them, timing error is the most problematic since estimation of timing errors becomes more cumbersome in high-frequencies. Estimation and correction of timing errors in time-interleaved ADCs are hot topics of research. Calibration of errors can be on background or on foreground. Background calibration is more desirable since it allows system to adapt to changing conditions while not hindering the operation of the ADC. Time interleaving errors generate spurs on the spectrum. Spurs are problematic for the wireless communication systems, since they may block the input signal. In order to extinguish the spurs a channel randomization technique is proposed. Technique is based on randomly taking one of the ADC channels to make the errors of the channels noise-like term. It is advantageous since it works on background. Technique maintains a spur-free spectrum however does not improve the SNR of the system. Estimation of channel mismatch errors and clock distribution in a time-interleaved ADC becomes tedious as the number of channels increase. In order to keep the channel number low, channels should be fast while being power efficient. To satisfy this task, an 8-bit 1 GS/s multi-bit per cycle ADC is proposed. ADC employs a novel search algorithm based on redundancy. No calibration scheme required thanks to the algorithm therefore the power efficiency of the system can be increased. In order to realize the multi-bit per cycle structure, a multiple-threshold generation preamp is proposed. Comparators are the most important part of an ADC. Comparator specifications such as speed, accuracy and power consumption directly affect the relative specifications of the whole ADC. A novel latch with embedded preamp is proposed. Novel structure has latch regeneration time, offset, power consumption and kickback noise improvements over the conventional structures. 8-bit 1 GS/s multi-bit per cycle SAR ADC employs a flash ADC to perform the coarse conversion benefit from its speed. Although flash ADCs are fast, offset and kickback noise of comparators can penalize their accuracy. Proposed latch with embedded preamp improves the offset performance. To solve the kickback issue, reference voltages of the flash ADC are sampled. This technique is based on equalizing the kickback for both input and reference voltages therefore eliminating the effect. Sampling network of the ADC is critically important since any error made in the sampling phase directly passes to the ADC. Bootstrapped switches are used to improve the linearity of the switches. By using bootstrap switches, charge injection can be made signal independent. If it is combined with the reference sampling technique used in flash ADC, effects of charge injection can be diminished significantly. ADC blocks are designed and laid out in ST Microlectronics 65 nm process. Postlayout simulations have proven the efectiveness of the proposed techniques and blocks. Tape-out was done in July 2015. Measurements is expected to take place in November 2015.Yüksek LisansM.Sc

Fully-passive switched-capacitor techniques for high performance SAR ADC design

In recent years, SAR ADC becomes more and more popular in various low-power applications such as wireless sensors and low energy radios due to its circuit simplicity, high power efficiency, and scaling compatibility. However, its speed is limited by its successive approximation procedures and its power efficiency greatly reduces with the ADC resolution going beyond 10 bit. To address these issues, this thesis proposes to embed two techniques: 1) compressive sensing (CS) and 2) noise shaping (NS) to a conventional SAR ADC. The realization of both techniques are based on fully-passive switched-capacitor techniques. CS is a recently emerging sampling paradigm, stating that the sparsity of a signal can be exploited to reduce the ADC sampling rate below the Nyquist rate. Different from conventional CS frameworks which require dedicated analog CS encoders, this thesis proposes a fully-passive CS-SAR ADC architecture which only requires minor modification to a conventional SAR ADC. Two chips are fabricated in a 0.13 µm process to prove the concept. One chip is a single-channel CS-SAR ADC which can reduce the ADC conversion rate by 4 times, thus reducing the ADC power by 4 times. In many wireless sensing applications, multiple ADCs are commonly required to sense multi-channel signals such as multi-lead ECG sensing and parallel neural recording. Therefore, the other chip is a multi-channel CS-SAR ADC which can simultaneously convert 4-channel signals with a sampling rate of one channel’s Nyquist rate. At 0.8 V and 1 MS/s, both chips achieve an effective Walden FoM of around 5 fJ/conversion-step. This thesis also proposes a novel NS SAR ADC architecture that is simple, robust and low power for high-resolution applications. Compared to conventional ∆Σ ADCs, it replaces the power-hungry active integrator with a passive integrator which only requires one switch and two capacitors. Compared to previous 1st-order NS SAR ADC works, it achieves the best NS performance and can be easily extended to 2nd-order. A 1st-order 10-bit NS SAR ADC is fabricated in a 0.13 µm process. Through NS, SNDR increases by 6 dB with OSR doubled, achieving a 12- bit ENOB at OSR = 8. An improved version of a 2nd-order 9-bit NS SAR ADC is designed and simulated in a 40 nm process. The SNDR increases by 10 dB with OSR doubled, achieving a 14-bit ENOB at OSR = 16. At a bandwidth of 312.5 kHz, the Schreier FoM is 181 dB and the Walden FoM is 12.5 fJ/conversion-step, proving that the proposed NS SAR ADC architecture can achieve high resolution and high power efficiency simultaneously.Electrical and Computer Engineerin

Design Techniques for High-Performance SAR A/D Converters

The design of electronics needs to account for the non-ideal characteristics of the device technologies used to realize practical circuits. This is particularly important in mixed analog-digital design since the best device technologies are very different for digital compared to analog circuits. One solution for this problem is to use a calibration correction approach to remove the errors introduced by devices, but this adds complexity and power dissipation, as well as reducing operation speed, and so must be optimised. This thesis addresses such an approach to improve the performance of certain types of analog-to-digital converter (ADC) used in advanced telecommunications, where speed, accuracy and power dissipation currently limit applications. The thesis specifically focuses on the design of compensation circuits for use in successive approximation register (SAR) ADCs. ADCs are crucial building blocks in communication systems, in general, and for mobile networks, in particular. The recently launched fifth generation of mobile networks (5G) has required new ADC circuit techniques to meet the higher speed and lower power dissipation requirements for 5G technology. The SAR has become one of the most favoured architectures for designing high-performance ADCs, but the successive nature of the circuit operation makes it difficult to reach ∼GS/s sampling rates at reasonable power consumption. Here, two calibration techniques for high-performance SAR ADCs are presented. The first uses an on-chip stochastic-based mismatch calibration technique that is able to accurately compute and compensate for the mismatch of a capacitive DAC in a SAR ADC. The stochastic nature of the proposed calibration method enables determination of the mismatch of the CAPDAC with a resolution much better than that of the DAC. This allows the unit capacitor to scale down to as low as 280aF for a 9-bit DAC. Since the CAP-DAC causes a large part of the overall dynamic power consumption and directly determines both the sizes of the driving and sampling switches and the size of the input capacitive load of the ADC and the kT/C noise power, a small CAP-DAC helps the power efficiency. To validate the proposed calibration idea, a 10-bit asynchronous SAR ADC was fabricated in 28-nm CMOS. Measurement results show that the proposed stochastic calibration improves the ADC’s SFDR and SNDR by 14.9 dB, 11.5 dB, respectively. After calibration, the fabricated SAR ADC achieves an ENOB of 9.14 bit at a sampling rate of 85 MS/s, resulting in a Walden FoM of 10.9 fJ/c-s. The second calibration technique is a timing-skew calibration for a time-interleaved (TI) SAR ADC that calibrates/computes the inter-channel timing and offset mismatch simultaneously. Simulation results show the effectiveness of this calibration method. When used together, the proposed mismatch calibration technique and the timing-skew calibration technique enables a TI SAR ADC to be designed that can achieve a sampling rate of ∼GS/s with 10-bit resolution and a power consumption as low as ∼10mW; specifications that satisfy the requirements of 5G technology

Low Power Cmos Circuit Design And Reliability Analysis For Wireless Me

A sensor node \u27AccuMicroMotion\u27 is proposed that has the ability to detect motion in 6 degrees of freedom for the application of physiological activity monitoring. It is expected to be light weight, low power, small and cheap. The sensor node may collect and transmit 3 axes of acceleration and 3 axes of angular rotation signals from MEMS transducers wirelessly to a nearby base station while attached to or implanted in human body. This dissertation proposes a wireless electronic system-on-a-single-chip to implement the sensor in a traditional CMOS process. The system is low power and may operate 50 hours from a single coin cell battery. A CMOS readout circuit, an analog to digital converter and a wireless transmitter is designed to implement the proposed system. In the architecture of the \u27AccuMicroMotion\u27 system, the readout circuit uses chopper stabilization technique and can resolve DC to 1 KHz and 200 nV signals from MEMS transducers. The base band signal is digitized using a 10-bit successive approximation register analog to digital converter. Digitized outputs from up to nine transducers can be combined in a parallel to serial converter for transmission by a 900 MHz RF transmitter that operates in amplitude shift keying modulation technique. The transmitter delivers a 2.2 mW power to a 50 Ù antenna. The system consumes an average current of 4.8 mA from a 3V supply when 6 sensors are in operation and provides an overall 60 dB dynamic range. Furthermore, in this dissertation, a methodology is developed that applies accelerated electrical stress on MOS devices to extract BSIM3 models and RF parameters through measurements to perform comprehensive study, analysis and modeling of several analog and RF circuits under hot carrier and breakdown degradation

Wideband CMOS Data Converters for Linear and Efficient mmWave Transmitters

With continuously increasing demands for wireless connectivity, higher\ua0carrier frequencies and wider bandwidths are explored. To overcome a limited transmit power at these higher carrier frequencies, multiple\ua0input multiple output (MIMO) systems, with a large number of transmitters\ua0and antennas, are used to direct the transmitted power towards\ua0the user. With a large transmitter count, each individual transmitter\ua0needs to be small and allow for tight integration with digital circuits. In\ua0addition, modern communication standards require linear transmitters,\ua0making linearity an important factor in the transmitter design.In this thesis, radio frequency digital-to-analog converter (RF-DAC)-based transmitters are explored. They shift the transition from digital\ua0to analog closer to the antennas, performing both digital-to-analog\ua0conversion and up-conversion in a single block. To reduce the need for\ua0computationally costly digital predistortion (DPD), a linear and wellbehaved\ua0RF-DAC transfer characteristic is desirable. The combination\ua0of non-overlapping local oscillator (LO) signals and an expanding segmented\ua0non-linear RF-DAC scaling is evaluated as a way to linearize\ua0the transmitter. This linearization concept has been studied both for\ua0the linearization of the RF-DAC itself and for the joint linearization of\ua0the cascaded RF-DAC-based modulator and power amplifier (PA) combination.\ua0To adapt the linearization, observation receivers are needed.\ua0In these, high-speed analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) have a central\ua0role. A high-speed ADC has been designed and evaluated to understand\ua0how concepts used to increase the sample rate affect the dynamic performance

Oversampled analog-to-digital converter architectures based on pulse frequency modulation

Mención Internacional en el título de doctorThe purpose of this research work is providing new insights in the development of voltage-controlled oscillator based analog-to-digital converters (VCO-based ADCs). Time-encoding based ADCs have become of great interest to the designer community due to the possibility of implementing mostly digital circuits, which are well suited for current deep-submicron CMOS processes. Within this topic, VCO-based ADCs are one of the most promising candidates. VCO-based ADCs have typically been analyzed considering the output phase of the oscillator as a state variable, similar to the state variables considered in __ modulation loops. Although this assumption might take us to functional designs (as verified by literature), it does not take into account neither the oscillation parameters of the VCO nor the deterministic nature of quantization noise. To overcome this issue, we propose an interpretation of these type of systems based on the pulse frequency modulation (PFM) theory. This permits us to analytically calculate the quantization noise, in terms of the working parameters of the system. We also propose a linear model that applies to VCO-based systems. Thanks to it, we can determine the different error processes involved in the digitization of the input data, and the performance limitations which these processes direct to. A generic model for any order open-loop VCO-based ADCs is made based on the PFM theory. However, we will see that only the first-order case and a second order approximation can be implemented in practice. The PFM theory also allows us to propose novel approaches to both single-stage and multistage VCObased architectures. We describe open-loop architectures such as VCO-based architectures with digital precoding, PFM-based architectures that can be used as efficient ADCs or MASH architectures with optimal noise-transfer-function (NTF) zeros. We also make a first approach to the proposal and analysis of closed loop architectures. At the same time, we deal with one of the main limitations of VCOs (especially those built with ring oscillators), which is the non-linear voltage to- frequency relation. In this document, we describe two techniques mitigate this phenomenon. Firstly, we propose to use a pulse width modulator in front of the VCO. This way, there are only two possible oscillation states. Consequently, the oscillator works linearly. To validate the proposed technique, an experimental prototype was implemented in a 40-nm CMOS process. The chip showed noise problems that degraded the expected resolution, but allowed us to verify that the potential performance was close to the expected one. A potential signal-to-noise-distortion ratio (SNDR) equal to 56 dB was achieved in 20 MHz bandwidth, consuming 2.15 mW with an occupied area equal to 0.03 mm2. In comparison to other equivalent systems, the proposed architecture is simpler, while keeping similar power consumption and linearity properties. Secondly, we used a pulse frequency modulator to implement a second ADC. The proposed architecture is intrinsically linear and uses a digital delay line to increase the resolution of the converter. One experimental prototype was implemented in a 40-nm CMOS process using one of these architectures. Proper results were measured from this prototype. These results allowed us to verify that the PFM-based architecture could be used as an efficient ADC. The measured peak SNDR was equal to 53 dB in 20 MHz bandwidth, consuming 3.5 mW with an occupied area equal to 0.08 mm2. The architecture shows a great linearity, and in comparison to related work, it consumes less power and occupies similar area. In general, the theoretical analyses and the architectures proposed in the document are not restricted to any application. Nevertheless, in the case of the experimental chips, the specifications required for these converters were linked to communication applications (e.g. VDSL, VDSL2, or even G.fast), which means medium resolution (9-10 bits), high bandwidth (20 MHz), low power and low area.El propósito del trabajo presentado en este documento es aportar una nueva perspectiva para el diseño de convertidores analógico-digitales basados en osciladores controlados por tensión. Los convertidores analógico-digitales con codificación temporal han llamado la atención durante los últimos años de la comunidad de diseñadores debido a la posibilidad de implementarlos en su gran mayoría con circuitos digitales, los cuales son muy apropiados para los procesos de diseño manométricos. En este ámbito, los convertidores analógico-digitales basados en osciladores controlados por tensión son uno de los candidatos más prometedores. Los convertidores analógico-digitales basados en osciladores controlados por tensión han sido típicamente analizados considerando que la fase del oscilador es una variable de estado similar a las que se observan en los moduladores __. Aunque esta consideración puede llevarnos a diseños funcionales (como se puede apreciar en muchos artículos de la literatura), en ella no se tiene en cuenta ni los parámetros de oscilación ni la naturaleza determinística del ruido de cuantificación. Para solventar esta cuestión, en este documento se propone una interpretación alternativa de este tipo de sistemas haciendo uso de la teoría de la modulación por frecuencia de pulsos. Esto nos permite calcular de forma analítica las ecuaciones que modelan el ruido de cuantificación en función de los parámetros de oscilación. Se propone también un modelo lineal para el análisis de convertidores analógico-digitales basados en osciladores controlados por tensión. Este modelo permite determinar las diferentes fuentes de error que se producen durante el proceso de digitalización de los datos de entrada y las limitaciones que suponen. Un modelo genérico de convertidor de cualquier orden se propone con la ayuda de este modelo. Sin embargo, solo los casos de primer orden y una aproximación al caso de segundo orden se pueden implementar en la práctica. La teoría de la modulación por frecuencia de pulsos también permite nuevas perspectivas para la propuesta y el análisis tanto de arquitecturas de una sola etapa como de arquitecturas de varias etapas construidas con osciladores controlados por tensión. Se proponen y se describen arquitecturas en lazo abierto como son las basadas en osciladores controlador por tensión con moduladores digitales en la etapa de entrada, moduladores por frecuencia de pulsos que se utilizan como convertidores analógico-digitales eficientes o arquitecturas en cascada en las que se optimizan la distribución de los ceros en la función de transferencia del ruido. También se realiza una aproximación a la propuesta y el análisis de arquitecturas en lazo cerrado. Al mismo tiempo, se aborda una de las problemáticas más importantes de los osciladores controlados por tensión (especialmente en aquellos implementados mediante osciladores en anillo): la relación tensión-freculineal que presentan este tipo de circuitos. En el documento, se describen dos técnicas cuyo objetivo es mitigar esta limitación. La primera técnica de corrección se basa en el uso de un modulador por ancho de pulsos antes del oscilador controlado por tensión. De esta forma, solo existen dos estados de oscilación en el oscilador, se trabaja de forma lineal y no se genera distorsión en los datos de salida. La técnica se propone de forma teórica haciendo uso de la teoría desarrollada previamente. Para llevar a cabo la validación de la propuesta teórica se fabricó un prototipo experimental en un proceso CMOS de 40-nm. El chip mostró problemas de ruido que limitaban la resolución, sin embargo, nos permitió velicar que la resolución ideal que se podrá haber obtenido estaba muy cercana a la resolución esperada. Se obtuvo una potencial relación señal-(ruido-distorsión) igual a 56 dB en 20 MHz de ancho de banda, un consumo de 2.15 mW y un área igual a 0.03 mm2. En comparación con sistemas equivalentes, la arquitectura propuesta es más simple al mismo tiempo que se mantiene el consumo así como la linealidad. A continuación, se propone la implementación de un convertidor analógico digital mediante un modulador por frecuencia de pulsos. La arquitectura propuesta es intrínsecamente lineal y hace uso de una línea de retraso digital con el fin de mejorar la resolución del convertidor. Como parte del trabajo experimental, se fabricó otro chip en tecnología CMOS de 40 nm con dicha arquitectura, de la que se obtuvieron resultados notables. Estos resultados permitieron verificar que la arquitectura propuesta, en efecto, podrá emplearse como convertidor analógico-digital eficiente. La arquitectura consigue una relación real señal-(ruido-distorsión) igual a 53 dB en 20 MHz de ancho de banda, un consumo de 3.5 mW y un área igual a 0.08 mm2. Se obtiene una gran linealidad y, en comparación con arquitecturas equivalentes, el consumo es menor mientras que el área ocupada se mantiene similar. En general, las aportaciones propuestas en este documento se pueden aplicar a cualquier tipo de aplicación, independientemente de los requisitos de resolución, ancho de banda, consumo u área. Sin embargo, en el caso de los prototipos fabricados, las especificaciones se relacionan con el ámbito de las comunicaciones (VDSL, VDSL2, o incluso G.fast), en donde se requiere una resolución media (9-10 bits), alto ancho de banda (20 MHz), manteniendo bajo consumo y baja área ocupada.Programa Oficial de Doctorado en Ingeniería Eléctrica, Electrónica y AutomáticaPresidente: Michael Peter Kennedy.- Secretario: Antonio Jesús López Martín.- Vocal: Jörg Hauptman