Metodologia Per la Caratterizzazione di amplificatori a basso rumore per UMTS

In questo lavoro si presenta una metodologia di progettazione elettronica a livello di sistema, affrontando il problema della caratterizzazione dello spazio di progetto dell' amplificatore a basso rumore costituente il primo stadio di un front end a conversione diretta per UMTS realizzato in tecnologia CMOS con lunghezza di canale .18u. La metodologia è sviluppata al fine di valutare in modo quantititativo le specifiche ottime di sistema per il front-end stesso e si basa sul concetto di Piattaforma Analogica, che prevede la costruzione di un modello di prestazioni per il blocco analogico basato su campionamento statistico di indici di prestazioni del blocco stesso, misurati tramite simulazione di dimensionamenti dei componenti attivi e passivi soddisfacenti un set di equazioni specifico della topologia circuitale. Gli indici di prestazioni vengono successivamente ulizzati per parametrizzare modelli comportamentali utilizzati nelle fasi di ottimizzazione a livello di sistema. Modelli comportamentali atti a rappresentare i sistemi RF sono stati pertanto studiati per ottimizzare la scelta delle metriche di prestazioni. L'ottimizzazione dei set di equazioni atti a selezionare le configurazione di interesse per il campionamento ha al tempo stesso richiesto l'approfondimento dei modelli di dispositivi attivi validi in tutte le regioni di funzionamento, e lo studio dettagliato della progettazione degli amplificatori a basso rumore basati su degenerazione induttiva. Inoltre, il problema della modellizzazione a livello di sistema degli effetti della comunicazione tra LNA e Mixer è stato affrontato proponendo e analizzando diverse soluzioni. Il lavoro ha permesso di condurre un'ottimizzazione del front-end UMTS, giungendo a specifiche ottime a livello di sistema per l'amplificatore stesso

Duty-cycled Wake-up Schemes for Ultra-low Power Wireless Communications

In sensor network applications with low traffic intensity, idle channel listening is one of the main sources of energy waste.The use of a dedicated low-power wake-up receiver (WRx) which utilizes duty-cycled channel listening can significantlyreduce idle listening energy cost. In this thesis such a scheme is introduced and it is called DCW-MAC, an acronym forduty-cycled wake-up receiver based medium access control.We develop the concept in several steps, starting with an investigation into the properties of these schemes under idealizedconditions. This analysis show that DCW-MAC has the potential to significantly reduce energy costs, compared to twoestablished reference schemes based only on low-power wake up receivers or duty-cycled listening. Findings motivatefurther investigations and more detailed analysis of energy consumption. We do this in two separate steps, first concentratingon the energy required to transmit wake-up beacons and later include all energy costs in the analysis. The more completeanalysis makes it possible to optimize wake-up beacons and other DCW-MAC parameters, such as sleep and listen intervals,for minimal energy consumption. This shows how characteristics of the wake-up receiver influence how much, and if, energycan be saved and what the resulting average communication delays are. Being an analysis based on closed form expressions,rather than simulations, we can derive and verify good approximations of optimal energy consumption and resulting averagedelays, making it possible to quickly evaluate how a different wake-up receiver characteristic influences what is possible toachieve in different scenarios.In addition to the direct optimizations of the DCW-MAC scheme, we also provide a proof-of-concept in 65 nm CMOS,showing that the digital base-band needed to implement DCW-MAC has negligible energy consumption compared to manylow-power analog front-ends in literature. We also propose a a simple frame-work for comparing the relative merits ofanalog front-ends for wake-up receivers, where we use the experiences gained about DCW-MAC energy consumption toprovide a simple relation between wake-up receiver/analog front-end properties and energy consumption for wide ranges ofscenario parameters. Using this tool it is possible to compare analog front-ends used in duty-cycled wake-up schemes, evenif they are originally designed for different scenarios.In all, the thesis presents a new wake-up receiver scheme for low-power wireless sensor networks and provide a comprehensiveanalysis of many of its important properties

Minimum power design of RF front ends

This thesis describes an investigation into the design of RF front ends with minimum power dissipation. The central question is: "What are the fundamental limits for the power dissipation of telecommunication front ends, and what design procedures can be followed that approach these limits and, at the same time, result in practical circuits?" After a discussion of the state of the art in this area, the elementary operations of a front end are identified. For each of these elementary operations, the fundamental limits for the power dissipation are discussed, divided into technology imposed limits and physics imposed limits. A traditional DECT front end design is used to demonstrate the large difference between the fundamental limits and the power dissipation of existing circuits. To improve this situation, first the optimum distribution of specifications across individual subcircuits needs to be determined, such that the requirements for a specific system can be fulfilled. This is achieved through the introduction of formal transforms of the specifications of subcircuits, which correspond with transforms of the subcircuit itself. Using these transforms, the optimum distribution of gain, noise, linearity and power dissipation can be determined. As it turns out, this optimum distribution can even be represented by a simple, analytical expression. This expression predicts that the power dissipation of the DECT front end can be reduced by a factor of 2.7 through an optimum distribution of the specifications. Using these optimum specifications of the subcircuits, the boundaries for further power dissipation reduction can be determined. This is investigated at the system, circuit and technology level. These insights are used in the design of a 2.5GHz wireless local area network, implemented in an optimized technology ("Silicon on Anything"). The power dissipation of the complete receiver is 3.5mW, more than an order of magnitude below other wireless LAN receivers in recent publications. Finally, the combination of this minimum power design method with a platform based development strategy is discussed

The Expanded Very Large Array

In almost 30 years of operation, the Very Large Array (VLA) has proved to be a remarkably flexible and productive radio telescope. However, the basic capabilities of the VLA have changed little since it was designed. A major expansion utilizing modern technology is currently underway to improve the capabilities of the VLA by at least an order of magnitude in both sensitivity and in frequency coverage. The primary elements of the Expanded Very Large Array (EVLA) project include new or upgraded receivers for continuous frequency coverage from 1 to 50 GHz, new local oscillator, intermediate frequency, and wide bandwidth data transmission systems to carry signals with 16 GHz total bandwidth from each antenna, and a new digital correlator with the capability to process this bandwidth with an unprecedented number of frequency channels for an imaging array. Also included are a new monitor and control system and new software that will provide telescope ease of use. Scheduled for completion in 2012, the EVLA will provide the world research community with a flexible, powerful, general-purpose telescope to address current and future astronomical issues.Comment: Added journal reference: published in Proceedings of the IEEE, Special Issue on Advances in Radio Astronomy, August 2009, vol. 97, No. 8, 1448-1462 Six figures, one tabl

Characterization and Design of Analog Integrated Circuits Exploiting Analog Platforms

Universal Mobile Telecommunication System (UMTS) front end design is challenging because of the need to optimize power while satisfying a very high dynamic range requirement. At the same time, designing analog circuits for automotive applications is very difficult because of the wide temperature range (from -40 to 125 degrees at least) they must tolerate. Dealing with this design problems at the transistor level does not allow to explore efficiently the design space, while using behavioral models does not allow to take into consideration important second-order effects. We present an extension of the platform-based design methodology originally developed for digital systems to the analog domain to conjugate the need of higher levels of abstraction to deal with complexity as well as the one of capturing enough of the actual circuit-level characteristics to deal with second order effects. This methodology is based on the concept of Analog Platform and is very useful both to characterize an analog circuit and to perform a system level optimization. We show how this methodology applied to the UMTS front-end design yields power savings as large as 47% versus an original hand optimized design. Besides, we give details on how to design an RC oscillator for automotive applications and to get its main performances at the aim of characterizing it

Communication Subsystems for Emerging Wireless Technologies

The paper describes a multi-disciplinary design of modern communication systems. The design starts with the analysis of a system in order to define requirements on its individual components. The design exploits proper models of communication channels to adapt the systems to expected transmission conditions. Input filtering of signals both in the frequency domain and in the spatial domain is ensured by a properly designed antenna. Further signal processing (amplification and further filtering) is done by electronics circuits. Finally, signal processing techniques are applied to yield information about current properties of frequency spectrum and to distribute the transmission over free subcarrier channels