203 research outputs found
Ultra low power circuits for a miniature apnoea detection device
Imperial Users onl
Development of Robust Analog and Mixed-Signal Circuits in the Presence of Process- Voltage-Temperature Variations
Continued improvements of transceiver systems-on-a-chip play a key role in the advancement of mobile telecommunication products as well as wireless systems in biomedical and remote sensing applications. This dissertation addresses the problems of escalating CMOS process variability and system complexity that diminish the reliability and testability of integrated systems, especially relating to the analog and mixed-signal blocks. The proposed design techniques and circuit-level attributes are aligned with current built-in testing and self-calibration trends for integrated transceivers. In this work, the main focus is on enhancing the performances of analog and mixed-signal blocks with digitally adjustable elements as well as with automatic analog tuning circuits, which are experimentally applied to conventional blocks in the receiver path in order to demonstrate the concepts.
The use of digitally controllable elements to compensate for variations is exemplified with two circuits. First, a distortion cancellation method for baseband operational transconductance amplifiers is proposed that enables a third-order intermodulation (IM3) improvement of up to 22dB. Fabricated in a 0.13µm CMOS process with 1.2V supply, a transconductance-capacitor lowpass filter with the linearized amplifiers has a measured IM3 below -70dB (with 0.2V peak-to-peak input signal) and 54.5dB dynamic range over its 195MHz bandwidth. The second circuit is a 3-bit two-step quantizer with adjustable reference levels, which was designed and fabricated in 0.18µm CMOS technology as part of a continuous-time SigmaDelta analog-to-digital converter system. With 5mV resolution at a 400MHz sampling frequency, the quantizer's static power dissipation is 24mW and its die area is 0.4mm^2.
An alternative to electrical power detectors is introduced by outlining a strategy for built-in testing of analog circuits with on-chip temperature sensors. Comparisons of an amplifier's measurement results at 1GHz with the measured DC voltage output of an on-chip temperature sensor show that the amplifier's power dissipation can be monitored and its 1-dB compression point can be estimated with less than 1dB error. The sensor has a tunable sensitivity up to 200mV/mW, a power detection range measured up to 16mW, and it occupies a die area of 0.012mm^2 in standard 0.18µm CMOS technology.
Finally, an analog calibration technique is discussed to lessen the mismatch between transistors in the differential high-frequency signal path of analog CMOS circuits. The proposed methodology involves auxiliary transistors that sense the existing mismatch as part of a feedback loop for error minimization. It was assessed by performing statistical Monte Carlo simulations of a differential amplifier and a double-balanced mixer designed in CMOS technologies
Multi-stage noise shaping (MASH) delta-sigma modulators for wideband and multi-standard applications
Imperial Users onl
Analysis and design of ΣΔ Modulators for Radio Frequency Switchmode Power Amplifiers
Power amplifiers are an integral part of every basestation, macrocell, microcell and mobile
phone, enabling data to be sent over the distances needed to reach the receiver’s antenna.
While linear operation is needed for transmitting WCDMA and OFDM signals, linear
operation of a power amplifier is characterized by low power efficiency, and contributes
to unwanted power dissipation in a transmitter. Recently, a switchmode power amplifier
operation was considered for reducing power losses in a RF transmitter. A linear and
efficient operation of a PA can be achieved when the transmitted RF signal is ΣΔ modu-
lated, and subsequently amplified by a nonlinear device. Although in theory this approach
offers linearity and efficiency reaching 100%, the use of ΣΔ modulation for transmitting
wideband signals causes problems in practical implementation: it requires high sampling
rate by the digital hardware, which is needed for shaping large contents of a quantization
noise induced by the modulator but also, the binary output from the modulator needs an
RF power amplifier operating over very wide frequency band.
This thesis addresses the problem of noise shaping in a ΣΔ modulator and nonlinear
distortion caused by broadband operation in switchmode power amplifier driven by a ΣΔ
modulated waveform. The problem of sampling rate increase in a ΣΔ modulator is solved
by optimizing structure of the modulator, and subsequent processing of an input signal’s
samples in parallel. Independent from the above, a novel technique for reducing quan-
tization noise in a bandpass ΣΔ modulator using single bit quantizer is presented. The
technique combines error pulse shaping and 3-level quantization for improving signal to
noise ratio in a 2-level output. The improvement is achieved without the increase of a digital
hardware’s sampling rate, which is advantageous also from the perspective of power
consumption. The new method is explored in the course of analysis, and verified by simulated
and experimental results. The process of RF signal conversion from the Cartesian to
polar form is analyzed, and a signal modulator for a polar transmitter with a ΣΔ-digitized
envelope signal is designed and implemented. The new modulator takes an advantage of
bandpass digital to analog conversion for simplifying the analog part of the modulator.
A deformation of the pulsed RF signal in the experimental modulator is demonstrated to
have an effect primarily on amplitude of the RF signal, which is correctable with simple
predistortion
Low-Power and Programmable Analog Circuitry for Wireless Sensors
Embedding networks of secure, wirelessly-connected sensors and actuators will help us to conscientiously manage our local and extended environments. One major challenge for this vision is to create networks of wireless sensor devices that provide maximal knowledge of their environment while using only the energy that is available within that environment. In this work, it is argued that the energy constraints in wireless sensor design are best addressed by incorporating analog signal processors. The low power-consumption of an analog signal processor allows persistent monitoring of multiple sensors while the device\u27s analog-to-digital converter, microcontroller, and transceiver are all in sleep mode. This dissertation describes the development of analog signal processing integrated circuits for wireless sensor networks. Specific technology problems that are addressed include reconfigurable processing architectures for low-power sensing applications, as well as the development of reprogrammable biasing for analog circuits
Low-Power and Programmable Analog Circuitry for Wireless Sensors
Embedding networks of secure, wirelessly-connected sensors and actuators will help us to conscientiously manage our local and extended environments. One major challenge for this vision is to create networks of wireless sensor devices that provide maximal knowledge of their environment while using only the energy that is available within that environment. In this work, it is argued that the energy constraints in wireless sensor design are best addressed by incorporating analog signal processors. The low power-consumption of an analog signal processor allows persistent monitoring of multiple sensors while the device\u27s analog-to-digital converter, microcontroller, and transceiver are all in sleep mode. This dissertation describes the development of analog signal processing integrated circuits for wireless sensor networks. Specific technology problems that are addressed include reconfigurable processing architectures for low-power sensing applications, as well as the development of reprogrammable biasing for analog circuits
Optical parametric oscillators and precision optical frequency measurements
Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Physics, 1996.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 254-258).by Dicky Lee.Ph.D
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