Automatic calibration of modulated fractional-N frequency synthesizers

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2001.Includes bibliographical references (p. 145-148).This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections.The focus of this research has been the development of a low power, radio frequency transmitter architecture. Specifically, a technique for in service automatic calibration of a modulated phase locked loop (PLL) frequency synthesizer has been developed. Phase/frequency modulation is accomplished by modulating the feedback divide value in a phase locked loop frequency synthesizer. A digital precompensation filter is used to extend the modulation bandwidth by canceling the low-pass transfer function of the PLL. The automatic calibration circuit maintains accurate matching between the digital precompensation filter and the analog PLL transfer function across process and temperature variations. The automatic calibration circuit, which is the main contribution of this thesis, operates while the transmitter is in service. This online calibration eliminates the need for production calibration and periodic down time for calibration cycles.(cont.) In addition the calibration circuitry provides greater accuracy in the modulation than what is possible via offline methods of calibration. The calibration circuit works with M-ary GFSK as well as 2 level GFSK. The automatic calibration circuit has been implemented in two forms to prove its operation. The first version is a circuit board level implementation with a center frequency of around 60 MHz. The second implementation of the system is in a full custom 0.6 ,Lm BiCMOS integrated circuit. The integrated circuit contains the complete synthesizer with automatic calibration and operates in the 1.88 GHz frequency band used by the Digital European Cordless Telephone (DECT) standard. A data rate of 2.5 Mbps using 2 level GFSK and 5.0 Mbps using 4 level GFSK has been achieved with a power consumption of 78 mW.by Daniel R. McMahill.Ph.D

Techniques for Frequency Synthesizer-Based Transmitters.

Internet of Things (IoT) devices are poised to be the largest market for the semiconductor industry. At the heart of a wireless IoT module is the radio and integral to any radio is the transmitter. Transmitters with low power consumption and small area are crucial to the ubiquity of IoT devices. The fairly simple modulation schemes used in IoT systems makes frequency synthesizer-based (also known as PLL-based) transmitters an ideal candidate for these devices. Because of the reduced number of analog blocks and the simple architecture, PLL-based transmitters lend themselves nicely to the highly integrated, low voltage nanometer digital CMOS processes of today. This thesis outlines techniques that not only reduce the power consumption and area, but also significantly improve the performance of PLL-based transmitters.PhDElectrical EngineeringUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/113385/1/mammad_1.pd

Linear Operation of Switch-Mode Outphasing Power Amplifiers

Radio transceivers are playing an increasingly important role in modern society. The ”connected” lifestyle has been enabled by modern wireless communications. The demand that has been placed on current wireless and cellular infrastructure requires increased spectral efficiency however this has come at the cost of power efficiency. This work investigates methods of improving wireless transceiver efficiency by enabling more efficient power amplifier architectures, specifically examining the role of switch-mode power amplifiers in macro cell scenarios. Our research focuses on the mechanisms within outphasing power amplifiers which prevent linear amplification. From the analysis it was clear that high power non-linear effects are correctable with currently available techniques however non-linear effects around the zero crossing point are not. As a result signal processing techniques for suppressing and avoiding non-linear operation in low power regions are explored. A novel method of digital pre-distortion is presented, and conventional techniques for linearisation are adapted for the particular needs of the outphasing power amplifier. More unconventional signal processing techniques are presented to aid linearisation of the outphasing power amplifier, both zero crossing and bandwidth expansion reduction methods are designed to avoid operation in nonlinear regions of the amplifiers. In combination with digital pre-distortion the techniques will improve linearisation efforts on outphasing systems with dynamic range and bandwidth constraints respectively. Our collaboration with NXP provided access to a digital outphasing power amplifier, enabling empirical analysis of non-linear behaviour and comparative analysis of behavioural modelling and linearisation efforts. The collaboration resulted in a bench mark for linear wideband operation of a digital outphasing power amplifier. The complimentary linearisation techniques, bandwidth expansion reduction and zero crossing reduction have been evaluated in both simulated and practical outphasing test benches. Initial results are promising and indicate that the benefits they provide are not limited to the outphasing amplifier architecture alone. Overall this thesis presents innovative analysis of the distortion mechanisms of the outphasing power amplifier, highlighting the sensitivity of the system to environmental effects. Practical and novel linearisation techniques are presented, with a focus on enabling wide band operation for modern communications standards

INJECTION-LOCKING TECHNIQUES FOR MULTI-CHANNEL ENERGY EFFICIENT TRANSMITTER

Ph.DDOCTOR OF PHILOSOPH

Multi-stage noise shaping (MASH) delta-sigma modulators for wideband and multi-standard applications

Imperial Users onl

Design of RF/IF analog to digital converters for software radio communication receivers

Software radio architecture can support multiple standards by performing analogto- digital (A/D) conversion of the radio frequency (RF) signals and running reconfigurable software programs on the backend digital signal processor (DSP). A slight variation of this architecture is the software defined radio architecture in which the A/D conversion is performed on intermediate frequency (IF) signals after a single down conversion. The first part of this research deals with the design and implementation of a fourth order continuous time bandpass sigma-delta (CT BP) C based on LC filters for direct RF digitization at 950 MHz with a clock frequency of 3.8 GHz. A new ADC architecture is proposed which uses only non-return to zero feedback digital to analog converter pulses to mitigate problems associated with clock jitter. The architecture also has full control over tuning of the coefficients of the noise transfer function for obtaining the best signal to noise ratio (SNR) performance. The operation of the architecture is examined in detail and extra design parameters are introduced to ensure robust operation of the ADC. Measurement results of the ADC, implemented in IBM 0.25 µm SiGe BiCMOS technology, show SNR of 63 dB and 59 dB in signal bandwidths of 200 kHz and 1 MHz, respectively, around 950 MHz while consuming 75 mW of power from ± 1.25 V supply. The second part of this research deals with the design of a fourth order CT BP ADC based on gm-C integrators with an automatic digital tuning scheme for IF digitization at 125 MHz and a clock frequency of 500 MHz. A linearized CMOS OTA architecture combines both cross coupling and source degeneration in order to obtain good IM3 performance. A system level digital tuning scheme is proposed to tune the ADC performance over process, voltage and temperature variations. The output bit stream of the ADC is captured using an external DSP, where a software tuning algorithm tunes the ADC parameters for best SNR performance. The IF ADC was designed in TSMC 0.35 µm CMOS technology and it consumes 152 mW of power from ± 1.65 V supply

Proceedings of the Second International Mobile Satellite Conference (IMSC 1990)

Presented here are the proceedings of the Second International Mobile Satellite Conference (IMSC), held June 17-20, 1990 in Ottawa, Canada. Topics covered include future mobile satellite communications concepts, aeronautical applications, modulation and coding, propagation and experimental systems, mobile terminal equipment, network architecture and control, regulatory and policy considerations, vehicle antennas, and speech compression

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