Study of Adjustable Gains for Control of Oscillation Frequency and Oscillation Condition in 3R-2C Oscillator

An idea of adjustable gain in order to obtain controllable features is very useful for design of tuneable oscillators. Several active elements with adjustable properties (current and voltage gain) are discussed in this paper. Three modified oscillator conceptions that are quite simple, directly electronically adjustable, providing independent control of oscillation condition and frequency were designed. Positive and negative aspects of presented method of control are discussed. Expected assumptions of adjustability are verified experimentally on one of the presented solution

Systematic Comparison of HF CMOS Transconductors

Transconductors are commonly used as active elements in high-frequency (HF) filters, amplifiers, mixers, and oscillators. This paper reviews transconductor design by focusing on the V-I kernel that determines the key transconductor properties. Based on bandwidth considerations, simple V-I kernels with few or no internal nodes are preferred. In a systematic way, virtually all simple kernels published in literature are generated. This is done in two steps: 1) basic 3-terminal transconductors are covered and 2) then five different techniques to combine two of them in a composite V-I kernel. In order to compare transconductors in a fair way, a normalized signal-to-noise ratio (NSNR) is defined. The basic V-I kernels and the five classes of composite V-I kernels are then compared, leading to insight in the key mechanisms that affect NSNR. Symbolic equations are derived to estimate NSNR, while simulations with more advanced MOSFET models verify the results. The results show a strong tradeoff between NSNR and transconductance tuning range. Resistively generated MOSFETs render the best NSNR results and are robust for future technology developments

A 0.18µm CMOS DDCCII for Portable LV-LP Filters

In this paper a current mode very low voltage (LV) (1V) and low power (LP) (21 µW) differential difference second generation current conveyor (CCII) is presented. The circuit is developed by applying the current sensing technique to a fully balanced version of a differential difference amplifier (DDA) so to design a suitable LV LP integrated version of the so-called differential difference CCII (DDCCII). Post-layout results, using a 0.18µm SMIC CMOS technology, have shown good general circuit performances making the proposed circuit suitable for fully integration in battery portable systems as, for examples, fully differential Sallen-Key bandpass filter

Biquadratic Filter Applications Using a Fully-Differential Active-Only Integrator

A new class of active filters, real active-only filters is described and possible implementation issues of these filters are discussed. To remedy these issues, a fully-differential active-only integrator block built around current controlled current conveyors is presented. The integration frequency of the proposed circuit is adjustable over a wide frequency range. As an application, a real active-only filter based on the classical two-integrator loop topology is presented and designed. The feasibility of this filter in a 0.35µm CMOS process is verified through SPECTRE simulation program in the CADENCE design tool

High Performance, Continuously Tunable Microwave Filters using MEMS Devices with Very Large, Controlled, Out-of-Plane Actuation

Software defined radios (SDR) in the microwave X and K bands offer the promise of low cost, programmable operation with real-time frequency agility. However, the real world in which such radios operate requires them to be able to detect nanowatt signals in the vicinity of 100 kW transmitters. This imposes the need for selective RF filters on the front end of the receiver to block the large, out of band RF signals so that the finite dynamic range of the SDR is not overwhelmed and the desired nanowatt signals can be detected and digitally processed. This is currently typically done with a number of narrow band filters that are switched in and out under program control. What is needed is a small, fast, wide tuning range, high Q, low loss filter that can continuously tune over large regions of the microwave spectrum. In this paper we show how extreme throw MEMS actuators can be used to build such filters operating up to 15 GHz and beyond. The key enabling attribute of our MEMS actuators is that they have large, controllable, out-of-plane actuation ranges of a millimeter or more. In a capacitance-post loaded cavity filter geometry, this gives sufficient precisely controllable motion to produce widely tunable devices in the 4-15 GHz regime.Comment: 12 pages 14 figures 2 table

A Low-Voltage Electronically Tunable MOSFET-C Voltage-Mode First-Order All-Pass Filter Design

This paper presents a simple electronically tunable voltage-mode first-order all-pass filter realization with MOSFET-C technique. In comparison to the classical MOSFET-C filter circuits that employ active elements including large number of transistors the proposed circuit is only composed of a single two n-channel MOSFET-based inverting voltage buffer, three passive components, and one NMOS-based voltage-controlled resistor, which is with advantage used to electronically control the pole frequency of the filter in range 103 kHz to 18.3 MHz. The proposed filter is also very suitable for low-voltage operation, since between its supply rails it uses only two MOSFETs. In the paper the effect of load is investigated. In addition, in order to suppress the effect of non-zero output resistance of the inverting voltage buffer, two compensation techniques are also introduced. The theoretical results are verified by SPICE simulations using PTM 90 nm level-7 CMOS process BSIM3v3 parameters, where +/- 0.45 V supply voltages are used. Moreover, the behavior of the proposed filter was also experimentally measured using readily available array transistors CD4007UB by Texas Instruments

Oscillation-based DFT for Second-order Bandpass OTA-C Filters

This document is the Accepted Manuscript version. Under embargo until 6 September 2018. The final publication is available at Springer via https://doi.org/10.1007/s00034-017-0648-9.This paper describes a design for testability technique for second-order bandpass operational transconductance amplifier and capacitor filters using an oscillation-based test topology. The oscillation-based test structure is a vectorless output test strategy easily extendable to built-in self-test. The proposed methodology converts filter under test into a quadrature oscillator using very simple techniques and measures the output frequency. Using feedback loops with nonlinear block, the filter-to-oscillator conversion techniques easily convert the bandpass OTA-C filter into an oscillator. With a minimum number of extra components, the proposed scheme requires a negligible area overhead. The validity of the proposed method has been verified using comparison between faulty and fault-free simulation results of Tow-Thomas and KHN OTA-C filters. Simulation results in 0.25μm CMOS technology show that the proposed oscillation-based test strategy for OTA-C filters is suitable for catastrophic and parametric faults testing and also effective in detecting single and multiple faults with high fault coverage.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio