54 research outputs found
Distributed UAV Swarm Augmented Wideband Spectrum Sensing Using Nyquist Folding Receiver
Distributed unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) swarms are formed by multiple UAVs
with increased portability, higher levels of sensing capabilities, and more
powerful autonomy. These features make them attractive for many recent
applica-tions, potentially increasing the shortage of spectrum resources. In
this paper, wideband spectrum sensing augmented technology is discussed for
distributed UAV swarms to improve the utilization of spectrum. However, the
sub-Nyquist sampling applied in existing schemes has high hardware complexity,
power consumption, and low recovery efficiency for non-strictly sparse
conditions. Thus, the Nyquist folding receiver (NYFR) is considered for the
distributed UAV swarms, which can theoretically achieve full-band spectrum
detection and reception using a single analog-to-digital converter (ADC) at low
speed for all circuit components. There is a focus on the sensing model of two
multichannel scenarios for the distributed UAV swarms, one with a complete
functional receiver for the UAV swarm with RIS, and another with a
decentralized UAV swarm equipped with a complete functional receiver for each
UAV element. The key issue is to consider whether the application of RIS
technology will bring advantages to spectrum sensing and the data fusion
problem of decentralized UAV swarms based on the NYFR architecture. Therefore,
the property for multiple pulse reconstruction is analyzed through the
Gershgorin circle theorem, especially for very short pulses. Further, the block
sparse recovery property is analyzed for wide bandwidth signals. The proposed
technology can improve the processing capability for multiple signals and wide
bandwidth signals while reducing interference from folded noise and subsampled
harmonics. Experiment results show augmented spectrum sensing efficiency under
non-strictly sparse conditions
Time-encoding analog-to-digital converters : bridging the analog gap to advanced digital CMOS? Part 2: architectures and circuits
The scaling of CMOS technology deep into the nanometer range has created challenges for the design of highperformance analog ICs: they remain large in area and power consumption in spite of process scaling. Analog circuits based on time encoding [1], [2], where the signal information is encoded in the waveform transitions instead of its amplitude, have been developed to overcome these issues. While part one of this overview article [3] presented the basic principles of time encoding, this follow-up article describes and compares the main time-encoding architectures for analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) and discusses the corresponding design challenges of the circuit blocks. The focus is on structures that avoid, as much as possible, the use of traditional analog blocks like operational amplifiers (opamps) or comparators but instead use digital circuitry, ring oscillators, flip-flops, counters, an so on. Our overview of the state of the art will show that these circuits can achieve excellent performance. The obvious benefit of this highly digital approach to realizing analog functionality is that the resulting circuits are small in area and more compatible with CMOS process scaling. The approach also allows for the easy integration of these analog functions in systems on chip operating at "digital" supply voltages as low as 1V and lower. A large part of the design process can also be embedded in a standard digital synthesis flow
Implementation of Industrial Narrow Band Communication System into SDR Concept
The rapid expansion of the digital signal processing has penetrated recently into a sphere of high performance industrial narrow band communication systems which had been for long years dominated by the traditional analog circuit design. Although it brings new potential to even increase the efficiency of the radio channel usage it also forces new challenges and compromises radio designers have to face. In this article we describe the design of the IF sampling industrial narrowband radio receiver, optimize a digital receiver structure implemented in a single FPGA circuit and study the performance of such radio receiver architecture. As an evaluation criterion the communication efficiency in form of maximum usable receiver sensitivity, co-channel rejection, adjacent channel selectivity and radio blocking measurement have been selected
Discrete-Time receivers for software-defined radio: challenges and solutions
Abstract—CMOS radio receiver architectures, based on radio frequency (RF) sampling followed by discrete-time (DT) signal processing via switched-capacitor circuits, have recently been proposed for dedicated radio standards. This paper explores the suitability of such DT receivers for highly flexible softwaredefined radio (SDR) receivers. Via symbolic analysis and simulations we analyze the properties of DT receivers, and show that at least three challenges exist to make a DT receiver work for SDR: 1) the sampling clock frequency is related to the radio frequency, complicating baseband filter design; 2) a frequencydependent phase shift is introduced by pseudo-quadrature and pseudo-differential sampling; 3) the conversion gain of a charge sampling front-end is strongly frequency-dependent. Some potential solutions are also suggested for each challenge. Compared to a mixer based radio receiver, extra costs are needed to solve these problems
Ring-oscillator with multiple transconductors for linear analog-to-digital conversion
This paper proposes a new circuit-based approach to mitigate nonlinearity in open-loop ring-oscillator-based analog-to-digital converters (ADCs). The approach consists of driving a current-controlled oscillator (CCO) with several transconductors connected in parallel with different bias conditions. The current injected into the oscillator can then be properly sized to linearize the oscillator, performing the inverse current-to-frequency function. To evaluate the approach, a circuit example has been designed in a 65-nm CMOS process, leading to a more than 3-ENOB enhancement in simulation for a high-swing differential input voltage signal of 800-mVpp, with considerable less complex design and lower power and expected area in comparison to state-of-the-art circuit based solutions. The architecture has also been checked against PVT and mismatch variations, proving to be highly robust, requiring only very simple calibration techniques. The solution is especially suitable for high-bandwidth (tens of MHz) medium-resolution applications (10–12 ENOBs), such as 5G or Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices.This research was funded by Project TEC2017-82653-R, Spain
A Highly Digital VCO-Based ADC With Lookup-Table-Based Background Calibration
CMOS technology scaling has enabled dramatic improvement for digital circuits both in terms of speed and power efficiency. However, most traditional analog-to-digital converter (ADC) architectures are challenged by ever-decreasing supply voltage. The improvement in time resolution enabled by increased digital speeds drives design towards time-domain architectures such as voltage-controlled-oscillator (VCO) based ADCs. The main challenge in VCO-based ADC design is mitigating the nonlinearity of VCO Voltage-to-frequency (V-to-f) characteristics. Achieving signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) performance better than 40dB requires some form of calibration, which can be realized by analog or digital techniques, or some combination. This dissertation proposes a highly digital, reconfigurable VCO-based ADC with lookup-table (LUT) based background calibration based on split ADC architecture. Each of the two split channels, ADC A and B , contains two VCOs in a differential configuration. This helps alleviate even-order distortions as well as increase the dynamic range. A digital controller on chip can reconfigure the ADCs\u27 sampling rates and resolutions to adapt to various application scenarios. Different types of input signals can be used to train the ADC’s LUT parameters through the simple, anti-aliasing continuous-time input to achieve target resolution. The chip is fabricated in a 180 nm CMOS process, and the active area of analog and digital circuits is 0.09 and 0.16mm^2, respectively. Power consumption of the core ADC function is 25 mW. Measured results for this prototype design with 12-b resolution show ENOB improves from uncorrected 5-b to 11.5-b with calibration time within 200 ms (780K conversions at 5 MSps sample rate)
Ultra-low-power circuits and systems for wearable and implantable medical devices
Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2013.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (pages 219-231).Advances in circuits, sensors, and energy storage elements have opened up many new possibilities in the health industry. In the area of wearable devices, the miniaturization of electronics has spurred the rapid development of wearable vital signs, activity, and fitness monitors. Maximizing the time between battery recharge places stringent requirements on power consumption by the device. For implantable devices, the situation is exacerbated by the fact that energy storage capacity is limited by volume constraints, and frequent battery replacement via surgery is undesirable. In this case, the design of energy-efficient circuits and systems becomes even more crucial. This thesis explores the design of energy-efficient circuits and systems for two medical applications. The first half of the thesis focuses on the design and implementation of an ultra-low-power, mixed-signal front-end for a wearable ECG monitor in a 0.18pm CMOS process. A mixed-signal architecture together with analog circuit optimizations enable ultra-low-voltage operation at 0.6V which provides power savings through voltage scaling, and ensures compatibility with state-of-the-art DSPs. The fully-integrated front-end consumes just 2.9[mu]W, which is two orders of magnitude lower than commercially available parts. The second half of this thesis focuses on ultra-low-power system design and energy-efficient neural stimulation for a proof-of-concept fully-implantable cochlear implant. First, implantable acoustic sensing is demonstrated by sensing the motion of a human cadaveric middle ear with a piezoelectric sensor. Second, alternate energy-efficient electrical stimulation waveforms are investigated to reduce neural stimulation power when compared to the conventional rectangular waveform. The energy-optimal waveform is analyzed using a computational nerve fiber model, and validated with in-vivo ECAP recordings in the auditory nerve of two cats and with psychophysical tests in two human cochlear implant users. Preliminary human subject testing shows that charge and energy savings of 20-30% and 15-35% respectively are possible with alternative waveforms. A system-on-chip comprising the sensor interface, reconfigurable sound processor, and arbitrary-waveform neural stimulator is implemented in a 0.18[mu]m high-voltage CMOS process to demonstrate the feasibility of this system. The sensor interface and sound processor consume just 12[mu]W of power, representing just 2% of the overall system power which is dominated by stimulation. As a result, the energy savings from using alternative stimulation waveforms transfer directly to the system.by Marcus Yip.Ph.D
Channelization for Multi-Standard Software-Defined Radio Base Stations
As the number of radio standards increase and spectrum resources come under more pressure, it becomes ever less efficient to reserve bands of spectrum for exclusive use by a single radio standard. Therefore, this work focuses on channelization structures compatible with spectrum sharing among multiple wireless standards and dynamic spectrum allocation in particular. A channelizer extracts independent communication channels from a wideband signal, and is one of the most computationally expensive components in a communications receiver. This work specifically focuses on non-uniform channelizers suitable for multi-standard Software-Defined Radio (SDR) base stations in general and public mobile radio base stations in particular.
A comprehensive evaluation of non-uniform channelizers (existing and developed during the course of this work) shows that parallel and recombined variants of the Generalised Discrete Fourier Transform Modulated Filter Bank (GDFT-FB) represent the best trade-off between computational load and flexibility for dynamic spectrum allocation. Nevertheless, for base station applications (with many channels) very high filter orders may be required, making the channelizers difficult to physically implement.
To mitigate this problem, multi-stage filtering techniques are applied to the GDFT-FB. It is shown that these multi-stage designs can significantly reduce the filter orders and number of operations required by the GDFT-FB. An alternative approach, applying frequency response masking techniques to the GDFT-FB prototype filter design, leads to even bigger reductions in the number of coefficients, but computational load is only reduced for oversampled configurations and then not as much as for the multi-stage designs. Both techniques render the implementation of GDFT-FB based non-uniform channelizers more practical.
Finally, channelization solutions for some real-world spectrum sharing use cases are developed before some final physical implementation issues are considered
High-Bandwidth Voltage-Controlled Oscillator based architectures for Analog-to-Digital Conversion
The purpose of this thesis is the proposal and implementation of data conversion
open-loop architectures based on voltage-controlled oscillators (VCOs) built with
ring oscillators (RO-based ADCs), suitable for highly digital designs, scalable to
the newest complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) nodes.
The scaling of the design technologies into the nanometer range imposes the
reduction of the supply voltage towards small and power-efficient architectures,
leading to lower voltage overhead of the transistors. Additionally, phenomena
like a lower intrinsic gain, inherent noise, and parasitic effects (mismatch between
devices and PVT variations) make the design of classic structures for ADCs more
challenging. In recent years, time-encoded A/D conversion has gained relevant
popularity due to the possibility of being implemented with mostly digital structures.
Within this trend, VCOs designed with ring oscillator based topologies
have emerged as promising candidates for the conception of new digitization
techniques.
RO-based data converters show excellent scalability and sensitivity, apart from
some other desirable properties, such as inherent quantization noise shaping and
implicit anti-aliasing filtering. However, their nonlinearity and the limited time
delay achievable in a simple NOT gate drastically limits the resolution of the converter,
especially if we focus on wide-band A/D conversion. This thesis proposes
new ways to alleviate these issues.
Firstly, circuit-based techniques to compensate for the nonlinearity of the ring
oscillator are proposed and compared to equivalent state-of-the-art solutions.
The proposals are designed and simulated in a 65-nm CMOS node for open-loop
RO-based ADC architectures. One of the techniques is also validated experimentally
through a prototype. Secondly, new ways to artificially increase the effective
oscillation frequency are introduced and validated by simulations. Finally, new
approaches to shape the quantization noise and filter the output spectrum of a
RO-based ADC are proposed theoretically. In particular, a quadrature RO-based
band-pass ADC and a power-efficient Nyquist A/D converter are proposed and
validated by simulations.
All the techniques proposed in this work are especially devoted for highbandwidth
applications, such as Internet-of-Things (IoT) nodes or maximally
digital radio receivers. Nevertheless, their field of application is not restricted to
them, and could be extended to others like biomedical instrumentation or sensing.El propósito de esta tesis doctoral es la propuesta y la implementación de arquitecturas
de conversión de datos basadas en osciladores en anillos, compatibles
con diseños mayoritariamente digitales, escalables en los procesos CMOS de fabricación
más modernos donde las estructuras digitales se ven favorecidas.
La miniaturización de las tecnologías CMOS de diseño lleva consigo la reducción
de la tensión de alimentación para el desarrollo de arquitecturas pequeñas
y eficientes en potencia. Esto reduce significativamente la disponibilidad de tensión
para saturar transistores, lo que añadido a una ganancia cada vez menor
de los mismos, ruido y efectos parásitos como el “mismatch” y las variaciones
de proceso, tensión y temperatura han llevado a que sea cada vez más complejo
el diseño de estructuras analógicas eficientes. Durante los últimos años la conversión
A/D basada en codificación temporal ha ganado gran popularidad dado
que permite la implementación de estructuras mayoritariamente digitales. Como
parte de esta evolución, los osciladores controlados por tensión diseñados con topologías
de oscilador en anillo han surgido como un candidato prometedor para
la concepción de nuevas técnicas de digitalización.
Los convertidores de datos basados en osciladores en anillo son extremadamente
sensibles (variación de frecuencia con respecto a la señal de entrada) así como
escalables, además de otras propiedades muy atractivas, como el conformado
espectral de ruido de cuantificación y el filtrado “anti-aliasing”. Sin embargo, su
respuesta no lineal y el limitado tiempo de retraso alcanzable por una compuerta
NOT restringen la resolución del conversor, especialmente para conversión A/D
en aplicaciones de elevado ancho de banda. Esta tesis doctoral propone nuevas
técnicas para aliviar este tipo de problemas.
En primer lugar, se proponen técnicas basadas en circuito para compensar el
efecto de la no linealidad en los osciladores en anillo, y se comparan con soluciones
equivalentes ya publicadas. Las propuestas se diseñan y simulan en tecnología
CMOS de 65 nm para arquitecturas en lazo abierto. Una de estas técnicas
presentadas es también validada experimentalmente a través de un prototipo.
En segundo lugar, se introducen y validan por simulación varias formas de incrementar
artificialmente la frecuencia de oscilación efectiva. Para finalizar, se
proponen teóricamente dos enfoques para configurar nuevas formas de conformación
del ruido de cuantificación y filtrado del espectro de salida de los datos
digitales. En particular, son propuestos y validados por simulación un ADC pasobanda
en cuadratura de fase y un ADC de Nyquist de gran eficiencia en potencia. Todas las técnicas propuestas en este trabajo están destinadas especialmente
para aplicaciones de alto ancho de banda, tales como módulos para el Internet
de las cosas o receptores de radiofrecuencia mayoritariamente digitales. A pesar
de ello, son extrapolables también a otros campos como el de la instrumentación
biomédica o el de la medición de señales mediante sensores.Programa de Doctorado en Ingeniería Eléctrica, Electrónica y Automática por la Universidad Carlos III de MadridPresidente: Juan Pablo Alegre Pérez.- Secretario: Celia López Ongil.- Vocal: Fernando Cardes Garcí
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