A 0.1–5.0 GHz flexible SDR receiver with digitally assisted calibration in 65 nm CMOS

© 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A 0.1–5.0 GHz flexible software-defined radio (SDR) receiver with digitally assisted calibration is presented, employing a zero-IF/low-IF reconfigurable architecture for both wideband and narrowband applications. The receiver composes of a main-path based on a current-mode mixer for low noise, a high linearity sub-path based on a voltage-mode passive mixer for out-of-band rejection, and a harmonic rejection (HR) path with vector gain calibration. A dual feedback LNA with “8” shape nested inductor structure, a cascode inverter-based TCA with miller feedback compensation, and a class-AB full differential Op-Amp with Miller feed-forward compensation and QFG technique are proposed. Digitally assisted calibration methods for HR, IIP2 and image rejection (IR) are presented to maintain high performance over PVT variations. The presented receiver is implemented in 65 nm CMOS with 5.4 mm2 core area, consuming 9.6–47.4 mA current under 1.2 V supply. The receiver main path is measured with +5 dB m/+5dBm IB-IIP3/OB-IIP3 and +61dBm IIP2. The sub-path achieves +10 dB m/+18dBm IB-IIP3/OB-IIP3 and +62dBm IIP2, as well as 10 dB RF filtering rejection at 10 MHz offset. The HR-path reaches +13 dB m/+14dBm IB-IIP3/OB-IIP3 and 62/66 dB 3rd/5th-order harmonic rejection with 30–40 dB improvement by the calibration. The measured sensitivity satisfies the requirements of DVB-H, LTE, 802.11 g, and ZigBee.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio

High Speed Integrated Circuits for High Speed Coherent Optical Communications

With the development of (sub) THz transistor technologies, high speed integrated circuits up to sub-THz frequencies are now feasible. These high speed and wide bandwidth ICs can improve the performance of optical components, coherent optical fiber communication, and imaging systems. In current optical systems, electrical ICs are used primarily as driving amplifiers for optical modulators, and in receiver chains including TIAs, AGCs, LPFs, ADCs and DSPs. However, there are numerous potential applications in optics using high speed ICs, and different approaches may be required for more efficient, compact and flexible optical systems.This dissertation will discuss three different approaches for optical components and communication systems using high speed ICs: a homodyne optical phase locked loop (OPLL), a heterodyne OPLL, and a new WDM receiver architecture.The homodyne OPLL receiver is designed for short-link optical communication systems using coherent modulation for high spectral efficiency. The phase-locked coherent receiver can recover the transmitted data without requiring complex back-end digital signal processing to recover the phase of the received optical carrier. The main components of the homodyne OPLL are a photonic IC (PIC), an electrical IC (EIC), and a loop filter. One major challenge in OPLL development is loop bandwidth; this must be of order 1 GHz in order for the loop to adequately track and suppress the phase fluctuations of the locked laser, yet a 1 GHz loop bandwidth demands small (<100 ps) propagation delays if the loop is to be stable. Monolithic integration of the high-speed loop components into one electrical and one photonic IC decreases the total loop delay. We have designed and demonstrated an OPLL with a compact size of 10 × 10 mm2, stably operating with a loop bandwidth of 1.1 GHz, a loop delay of 120 ps, a pull-in time of 0.55 μs and lock time of <10 ns. The coherent receiver can receive 40 Gb/s BPSK data with a bit error rate (BER) of <10-7, and operates up to 35 Gb/s with BER 10-12.The thesis also describes heterodyne OPLLs. These can be used to synthesize optical wavelengths of a broad bandwidth (optical wavelength synthesis) with narrow linewidth and with fast frequency switching. There are many applications of such narrow linewidth optical signal sources, including low phase noise mm-wave and THz-signal sources, wavelength-division-multiplexed optical transmitters, and coherent imaging and sensor systems. The heterodyne OPLL also has the same stability issues (loop delay and sensitivity) as the homodyne OPLL. In the EIC, a single sideband mixer operating using digital design principles (DSSBM) enables precisely controlled sweeping of the frequency of the locked laser, with control of the sign of the frequency offset. The loop's phase and frequency difference detector (PFD) uses digital design techniques to make the OPLL loop parameters only weakly sensitive to optical signal levels or optical or electrical component gains. The heterodyne OPLL operates stably with a loop bandwidth of 550 MHz and loop delay of <200 ps. An initial OPLL design exhibited optical frequency (wavelength) synthesis from -6 GHz to -2 GHz and from 2 GHz to 9 GHz. An improved OPLL reached frequency tuning up to 25 GHz. The homodyne OPLL exhibits -110 dBc/Hz phase noise at 10 MHz offset and -80 dBc/Hz at 5 kHz offset.Finally, the thesis describes a new WDM receiver architecture using broadband electrical ICs. In the proposed WDM receiver, a set of received signals at different optical wavelengths are mixed against a single optical local oscillator. This mixing converts the WDM channels to electrical signals in the receiver photocurrent, with each WDM signal being converted to an RF sub-carrier of different frequency. An electrical IC then separately converts each sub-carrier signal to baseband using single-sideband mixers and quadrature local oscillators. The proposed receiver needs less complex hardware than the arrays of wavelength-sensitive receivers now used for WDM, and can readily adjust to changes in the WDM channel frequencies. The proposed WDM receiver concept was demonstrated through several system experiments. Image rejection of greater than 25 dB, adjacent channel suppression of greater than 20 dB, operation with gridless channels, and six-channel data reception at a total 15 Gb/s (2.5 Gb/s BPSK × 6-channels) were demonstrated

Piezoelectric Materials

The science and technology in the area of piezoelectric ceramics are extremely progressing, especially the materials research, measurement technique, theory and applications, and furthermore, demanded to fit social technical requests such as environmental problems. While they had been concentrated on piezoelectric ceramics composed of lead-containing compositions, such as lead zirconate titanate (PZT) and lead titanate, at the beginning because of the high piezoelectricity, recently lead water pollution by soluble PZT of our environment must be considered. Therefore, different new compositions of lead-free ceramics in order to replace PZT are needed. Until now, there have been many studies on lead-free ceramics looking for new morphotropic phase boundaries, ceramic microstructure control to realize high ceramic density, including composites and texture developments, and applications to new evaluation techniques to search for high piezoelectricity. The purpose of this book is focused on the latest reports in piezoelectric materials such as lead-free ceramics, single crystals, and thin films from viewpoints of piezoelectric materials, piezoelectric science, and piezoelectric applications

Storia delle telecomunicazioni

Focusing on the history of scientific and technological development over recent centuries, the book is dedicated to the history of telecommunications, where Italy has always been in the vanguard, and is presented by many of the protagonists of the last half century. The book is divided into five sections. The first, dealing with the origins, starts from the scientific bases of the evolution of telecommunications in the nineteenth century (Bucci), addressing the developments of scientific thought that led to the revolution of the theory of fields (Morando), analysing the birth of the three fundamental forms of communication – telegraph (Maggi), telephone (Del Re) and radio (Falciasecca) – and ending with the contribution made by the Italian Navy to the development of telecommunications (Carulli, Pelosi, Selleri, Tiberio). The second section, on technical and scientific developments, presents the numerical processing of signals (Rocca), illustrating the genesis and metamorphosis of transmission (Pupolin, Benedetto, Mengali, Someda, Vannucchi), network packets (Marsan, Guadagni, Lenzini), photonics in telecommunications (Prati) and addresses the issue of research within the institutions (Fedi-Morello), dwelling in particular on the CSELT (Mossotto). The next section deals with the sectors of application, offering an overview of radio, television and the birth of digital cinema (Vannucchi, Visintin), military communications (Maestrini, Costamagna), the development of radar (Galati) and spatial telecommunications (Tartara, Marconicchio). Section four, on the organisation of the services and the role of industry, outlines the rise and fall of the telecommunications industries in Italy (Randi), dealing with the telecommunications infrastructures (Caroppo, Gamerro), the role of the providers in national communications (Gerarduzzi), the networks and the mobile and wireless services (Falciasecca, Ongaro) and finally taking a look towards the future from the perspective of the last fifty years (Vannucchi). The last section, dealing with training and dissemination, offers an array of food for thought: university training in telecommunications, with focus on the evolution of legislation and on the professional profiles (Roveri), social and cultural aspects (Longo and Crespellani) as well as a glance over the most important museums, collections and documentary sources for telecommunications in Italy (Lucci, Savini, Temporelli, Valotti). The book is designed to offer a compendium comprising different analytical approaches, and aims to foster an interest in technology in the new generations, in the hope of stimulating potentially innovative research