Analog Circuits in Ultra-Deep-Submicron CMOS

Modern and future ultra-deep-submicron (UDSM) technologies introduce several new problems in analog design. Nonlinear output conductance in combination with reduced voltage gain pose limits in linearity of (feedback) circuits. Gate-leakage mismatch exceeds conventional matching tolerances. Increasing area does not improve matching any more, except if higher power consumption is accepted or if active cancellation techniques are used. Another issue is the drop in supply voltages. Operating critical parts at higher supply voltages by exploiting combinations of thin- and thick-oxide transistors can solve this problem. Composite transistors are presented to solve this problem in a practical way. Practical rules of thumb based on measurements are derived for the above phenomena

A 90 nm CMOS 16 Gb/s Transceiver for Optical Interconnects

Interconnect architectures which leverage high-bandwidth optical channels offer a promising solution to address the increasing chip-to-chip I/O bandwidth demands. This paper describes a dense, high-speed, and low-power CMOS optical interconnect transceiver architecture. Vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) data rate is extended for a given average current and corresponding reliability level with a four-tap current summing FIR transmitter. A low-voltage integrating and double-sampling optical receiver front-end provides adequate sensitivity in a power efficient manner by avoiding linear high-gain elements common in conventional transimpedance-amplifier (TIA) receivers. Clock recovery is performed with a dual-loop architecture which employs baud-rate phase detection and feedback interpolation to achieve reduced power consumption, while high-precision phase spacing is ensured at both the transmitter and receiver through adjustable delay clock buffers. A prototype chip fabricated in 1 V 90 nm CMOS achieves 16 Gb/s operation while consuming 129 mW and occupying 0.105 mm^2

A Fully-Integrated Reconfigurable Dual-Band Transceiver for Short Range Wireless Communications in 180 nm CMOS

© 2015 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other users, including reprinting/ republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted components of this work in other works.A fully-integrated reconfigurable dual-band (760-960 MHz and 2.4-2.5 GHz) transceiver (TRX) for short range wireless communications is presented. The TRX consists of two individually-optimized RF front-ends for each band and one shared power-scalable analog baseband. The sub-GHz receiver has achieved the maximum 75 dBc 3rd-order harmonic rejection ratio (HRR3) by inserting a Q-enhanced notch filtering RF amplifier (RFA). In 2.4 GHz band, a single-ended-to-differential RFA with gain/phase imbalance compensation is proposed in the receiver. A ΣΔ fractional-N PLL frequency synthesizer with two switchable Class-C VCOs is employed to provide the LOs. Moreover, the integrated multi-mode PAs achieve the output P1dB (OP1dB) of 16.3 dBm and 14.1 dBm with both 25% PAE for sub-GHz and 2.4 GHz bands, respectively. A power-control loop is proposed to detect the input signal PAPR in real-time and flexibly reconfigure the PA's operation modes to enhance the back-off efficiency. With this proposed technique, the PAE of the sub-GHz PA is improved by x3.24 and x1.41 at 9 dB and 3 dB back-off powers, respectively, and the PAE of the 2.4 GHz PA is improved by x2.17 at 6 dB back-off power. The presented transceiver has achieved comparable or even better performance in terms of noise figure, HRR, OP1dB and power efficiency compared with the state-of-the-art.Peer reviewe

Switched Capacitor Loop Filter 와 Source Switched Charge Pump 를 이용한 Phase-Locked Loop 의 설계

학위논문(석사) -- 서울대학교대학원 : 공과대학 전기·정보공학부, 2022.2. 정덕균.This thesis proposes a low integrated RMS jitter and low reference spur phase locked loop (PLL) using a switched capacitor loop filter and source switched charge pump. The PLL employs a single tunable charge pump which reduces current mis match across wide control voltage range and charge sharing effect to get high perfor mance of reference spur level. The switched capacitor loop filter is adopted to achieve insensitivity to temperature, supply voltage, and process variation of a resistor. The proposed PLL covers a wide frequency range and has a low integrated RMS jitter and low reference spur level to target various interface standards. The mechanism of switched capacitor loop filter and source switched charge pump is analyzed. Fabricated in 40 nm CMOS technology, the proposed analog PLL provides four phase for a quarter-rate transmitter, consumes 6.35 mW at 12 GHz using 750 MHz reference clock, and occupies an 0.008 mm2 with an integrated RMS jitter (10 kHz to 100 MHz) of 244.8 fs. As a result, the PLL achieves a figure of merit (FoM) of -244.2 dB with high power efficiency of 0.53 mW/GHz, and reference spur level is -60.3 dBc.본 논문에서는 낮은 RMS jitter 와 낮은 레퍼런스 스퍼를 가지며 스위치축전기 루프 필터와 소스 스위치 전하 펌프를 이용한 PLL 을 제안한다. 제안된 PLL 은 레퍼런스 스퍼의 성능을 위해 넓은 컨트롤 전압의 범위 동안 전류의 오차를 줄여주고 전하 공유 효과를 줄여주는 하나의 조절 가능한 전하 펌프를 사용하였다. 저항의 온도, 공급 전압, 공정 변화에 따른 민감도를 낮추기 위해 스위치 축전기 루프 필터가 사용되었다. 다양한 인터페이스 표준을 지원하기 위해 제안하는 PLL 은 넓은 주파수 범위를 지원하고 낮은 RMS jitter 와 낮은 레퍼런스 스퍼를 갖는다. 스위치 축전기 루프 필터와 소스 스위치 전하 펌프의 동작 원리에 대해 분석하였다. 40 nm CMOS 공정으로 제작되었으며, 제안된 회로는 quarter-rate 송신기를 위해 4 개의 phase 를 만들어내며 750 MHz 의 레퍼런스 클락을 이용하여 12 GHz 에서 6.35 mW 의 power 를 소모하고 0.008mm2 의 유효 면적을 차지하고 10 kHz 부터 100 MHz 까지 적분했을 때의 RMS jitter 값은 244.8fs 이다. 제안하는 PLL 은 -244.2 dB 의 FoM, 0.53 mW/GHz 의 power 효율을 달성했으며 레퍼런스 스퍼는 -60.3 dBc 이다CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1 1.1 MOTIVATION 1 1.2 THESIS ORGANIZATION 3 CHAPTER 2 BACKGROUNDS 4 2.1 CLOCK GENERATION IN SERIAL LINK 4 2.2 PLL BUILDING BLOCKS 6 2.2.1 OVERVIEW 6 2.2.2 PHASE FREQUENCY DETECTOR 7 2.2.3 CHARGE PUMP AND LOOP FILTER 9 2.2.4 VOLTAGE CONTROLLED OSCILLATOR 10 2.2.5 FREQUENCY DIVIDER 13 2.3 PLL LOOP ANALYSIS 15 CHAPTER 3 PLL WITH SWITCHED CAPACITOR LOOP FILTER AND SOURCE SWITCHED CHARGE PUMP 19 3.1 DESIGN CONSIDERATION 19 3.2 PROPOSED ARCHITECTURE 21 3.3 CIRCUIT IMPLEMENTATION 23 3.3.1 PHASE FREQUENCY DETECTOR 23 3.3.2 SOURCE SWITCHED CHARGE PUMP 26 3.3.3 SWITCHED CAPACITOR LOOP FILTER 30 3.3.4 VOLTAGE CONTROLLED OSCILLATOR 35 3.3.5 POST VCO AMPLIFIER 39 3.3.6 FREQUENCY DIVIDER 40 CHAPTER 4 MEASUREMENT RESULTS 43 4.1 CHIP PHOTOMICROGRAPH 43 4.2 MEASUREMENT SETUP 45 4.3 MEASURED PHASE NOISE AND REFERENCE SPUR 47 4.4 PERFORMANCE SUMMARY 50 CHAPTER 5 CONCLUSION 52 BIBLIOGRAPHY 53 초 록 58석

Ultra-Low-Power Wake-up Clock Design for SoC Applications

This thesis studies how to design an ultra-low-power wake-up clock circuit for SoCapplications that essentially consists of a resistor based reference circuit, switched-capacitor branch, an ultra-low-power amplifier, a VCO and a non-overlapping clockphase generator circuit. The circuit is designed in 180-nm CMOS technology usingCAD software for circuit design, layout design, pre and post-layout simulations.At first, a brief study of different clock-generation circuit architectures is made,wherein their merits and de-merits are discussed. This is followed by a study ofan ultra-low-power amplifier, ring-oscillator-based VCO, non-overlapping clockcircuits, the bias generation circuit and the current reference circuit. Additionally,a reference current chopping technique that further improves temperature stabilityis also described. Later, the report discusses the design and simulations of theactual implementation. Analysis of the design with regards to power consumption,temperature stability and layout area are carried out. The circuit operates at8.254kHz consuming 70.4nW with a temperature stability of 7.35ppm/◦C in thetemperature range of -40◦C to 75◦C. The final layout takes an area of 0.153mm2.The final design is analysed for its functionality at various process, voltage andtemperature corners. Future improvements in the current design are also discussedat the end of this report

Integrated phased array systems in silicon

Silicon offers a new set of possibilities and challenges for RF, microwave, and millimeter-wave applications. While the high cutoff frequencies of the SiGe heterojunction bipolar transistors and the ever-shrinking feature sizes of MOSFETs hold a lot of promise, new design techniques need to be devised to deal with the realities of these technologies, such as low breakdown voltages, lossy substrates, low-Q passives, long interconnect parasitics, and high-frequency coupling issues. As an example of complete system integration in silicon, this paper presents the first fully integrated 24-GHz eight-element phased array receiver in 0.18-μm silicon-germanium and the first fully integrated 24-GHz four-element phased array transmitter with integrated power amplifiers in 0.18-μm CMOS. The transmitter and receiver are capable of beam forming and can be used for communication, ranging, positioning, and sensing applications

Design techniques for temperature insensitive, low phase noise oscillator

A reference clock generator is one of the most important components in many electronic devices. Common clock references are based on quartz crystals which offer high quality factor, good phase noise performance and excellent stability against temperature, voltage and process variation. However, due to incompatibility with silicon integration and high power consumption, they are not suitable for biomedical devices which require long battery lifetime, low cost and especially small size but do not require near-crystal accuracy. This thesis focuses on eliminating the quartz crystals and generating reference clock on a silicon chip. Moreover, this thesis proposes a way of combining two major oscillator types available in CMOS (RC and Ring) technology, while preserving the unique qualities of both of them and coming up with the proposed RCR (resistor-capacitor-ring) oscillator, that o ffers an excellent alternative for biomedical devices and wireless sensor networks. We coin the term RCR signifying the proposed approach of combining RC oscillators with ring oscillators to achieve a performance better than the performance of individual RC and ring oscillators. In order to generate stable clock frequency against temperature and supply variations a novel CMOS reference clock oscillator is proposed which exploits the RC and ring oscillator performances, providing the best of both worlds in performance. The proposed oscillator employs a supply-regulated ring oscillator in a feedback loop that follows a frequency insensitive RC oscillator, which minimizes the frequency sensitivity to supply and temperature variations. The clock oscillator achieves negligible frequency variation against supply variation of 1.1 V to 1.3 V and 0:37% against temperature variation of -40 C 125 C. In addition, low power consumption is achieved by using mostly digital circuitry operating at very low frequencies. Even the phase noise performance of the proposed oscillator shows a very high FoM of about 160 dB at the o set frequencies of 100 kHz and 1 MHz. This stability to temperature and supply along with excellent noise performance is the unique cornerstone of RCR oscillators proposed in this thesis, which cannot be found in any full-CMOS oscillators. When the performance of the clock oscillator is compared to that of the recently reported low power CMOS reference clock oscillators, the frequency variation to supply variation is reduced to zero, temperature sensitivity is also improved by approximately a factor of 3 and normalized power consumption to frequency output is reduced by a factor of 5. The proposed CMOS clock oscillator is implemented in 65 nm TSMC CMOS technology and consumes just 220 W from 1.2 V supply at an output frequency of 50 MHz

Rf Power Amplifier And Oscillator Design For Reliability And Variability

CMOS RF circuit design has been an ever-lasting research field. It gained so much attention since RF circuits have high mobility and wide band efficiency, while CMOS technology has the advantage of low cost and better capability of integration. At the same time, IC circuits never stopped scaling down for the recent many decades. Reliability issues with RF circuits have become more and more severe with device scaling down: reliability effects such as gate oxide break down, hot carrier injection, negative bias temperature instability, have been amplified as the device size shrinks. Process variability issues also become more predominant as the feature size decreases. With these insights provided, reliability and variability evaluations on typical RF circuits and possible compensation techniques are highly desirable. In this work, a class E power amplifier is designed and laid out using TSMC 0.18 µm RF technology and the chip was fabricated. Oxide stress and hot electron tests were carried out at elevated supply voltage, fresh measurement results were compared with different stress conditions after 10 hours. Test results matched very well with mixed mode circuit simulations, proved that hot carrier effects degrades PA performances like output power, power efficiency, etc. Self- heating effects were examined on a class AB power amplifier since PA has high power operations. Device temperature simulation was done both in DC and mixed mode level. Different gate biasing techniques were analyzed and their abilities to compensate output power were compared. A simple gate biasing circuit turned out to be efficient to compensate selfheating effects under different localized heating situations. iv Process variation was studied on a classic Colpitts oscillator using Monte-Carlo simulation. Phase noise was examined since it is a key parameter in oscillator. Phase noise was modeled using analytical equations and supported by good match between MATLAB results and ADS simulation. An adaptive body biasing circuit was proposed to eliminate process variation. Results from probability density function simulation demonstrated its capability to relieve process variation on phase noise. Standard deviation of phase noise with adaptive body bias is much less than the one without compensation. Finally, a robust, adaptive design technique using PLL as on-chip sensor to reduce Process, Voltage, Temperature (P.V.T.) variations and other aging effects on RF PA was evaluated. The frequency and phase of ring oscillator need to be adjusted to follow the frequency and phase of input in PLL no matter how the working condition varies. As a result, the control signal of ring oscillator has to fluctuate according to the working condition, reflecting the P.V.T changes. RF circuits suffer from similar P.V.T. variations. The control signal of PLL is introduced to RF circuits and converted to the adaptive tuning voltage for substrate bias. Simulation results illustrate that the PA output power under different variations is more flat than the one with no compensation. Analytical equations show good support to what has been observed

Low-Power Wake-Up Receivers

The Internet of Things (IoT) is leading the world to the Internet of Everything (IoE), where things, people, intelligent machines, data and processes will be connected together. The key to enter the era of the IoE lies in enormous sensor nodes being deployed in the massively expanding wireless sensor networks (WSNs). By the year of 2025, more than 42 billion IoT devices will be connected to the Internet. While the future IoE will bring priceless advantages for the life of mankind, one challenge limiting the nowadays IoT from further development is the ongoing power demand with the dramatically growing number of the wireless sensor nodes. To address the power consumption issue, this dissertation is motivated to investigate low-power wake-up receivers (WuRXs) which will significantly enhance the sustainability of the WSNs and the environmental awareness of the IoT. Two proof-of-concept low-power WuRXs with focuses on two different application scenarios have been proposed. The first WuRX, implemented in a cost-effective 180-nm CMOS semiconductor technology, operates at 401−406-MHz band. It is a good candidate for application scenarios, where both a high sensitivity and an ultra-low power consumption are in demand. Concrete use cases are, for instance, medical implantable applications or long-range communications in rural areas. This WuRX does not rely on a further assisting semiconductor technology, such as MEMS which is widely used in state-of-the-art WuRXs operating at similar frequencies. Thus, this WuRX is a promising solution to low-power low-cost IoT. The second WuRX, implemented in a 45-nm RFSOI CMOS technology, was researched for short-range communication applications, where high-density conventional IoT devices should be installed. By investigation of the WuRX for operation at higher frequency band from 5.5 GHz to 7.5 GHz, the nowadays ever more over-traffic issues that arise at low frequency bands such as 2.4 GHz can be substantially addressed. A systematic, analytical research route has been carried out in realization of the proposed WuRXs. The thesis begins with a thorough study of state-of-the-art WuRX architectures. By examining pros and cons of these architectures, two novel architectures are proposed for the WuRXs in accordance with their specific use cases. Thereon, key WuRX parameters are systematically analyzed and optimized; the performance of relevant circuits is modeled and simulated extensively. The knowledge gained through these investigations builds up a solid theoretical basis for the ongoing WuRX designs. Thereafter, the two WuRXs have been analytically researched, developed and optimized to achieve their highest performance. Proof-of-concept circuits for both the WuRXs have been fabricated and comprehensively characterized under laboratory conditions. Finally, measurement results have verified the feasibility of the design concept and the feasibility of both the WuRXs