mmWave Spatial-Temporal Single Harmonic Switching Transmitter Arrays for High back-off Beamforming Efficiency

This paper presents a spatial-temporal single harmonic switching (STHS) transmitter array architecture with enhanced efficiency in the power back-off (PBO) region. STHS is an electromagnetic and circuit co-designed and jointly optimized transmitter array that realizes beamforming and back-off power generation at the same time. The temporal dimension is originally added in STHS to achieve back-off efficiency enhancement, which can be combined with conventional power back-off enhancement methods such as Doherty amplifiers and envelope tracking. The design is validated through a simulation of a two-stage power amplifier in 65-nm CMOS at 77 GHz, which achieves a peak drain efficiency (DE) of 24.2%, a 22% DE at 3-dB PBO, 16% DE at 6-dB PBO, and 10.2% at 9-dB PBO. The efficiency exhibits a 57% improvement at 3-dB PBO, 100% improvement at 6-dB PBO, and 190% improvement at 9-dB PBO compared with class A/B amplifier

Analyzing Electromagnetic Systems on Electrically Large Platform Using a GTM-PO Hybrid Method with Synthetic Basis Functions

A hybrid method of generalized transition matrix (GTM) and physical optics (PO) with synthetic basis functions (SBF) is proposed to analyze electromagnetic systems on electrically large platforms. Based on domain decomposition method (DDM), the proposed approach is to divide the whole problem into a GTM region and a PO region. The GTM algorithm can simulate antennas and scatterers accurately, and the PO algorithm is applied to obtain current distribution on the electrically large platform. With the characteristics extraction technique using SBFs on the GTM models, the number of unknowns can be greatly reduced and the computational efficiency can be further improved. PO region is regarded as an environment background and the unknowns in the PO region need not to be directly solved. Numerical examples will be shown to demonstrate the feasibility of the hybrid method

IFDR: An Efficient Iterative Optimization Algorithm for Standard Cell Placement

In the automatic placement of integrated circuits, the force directed relaxation (FDR) method [Goto, S. (1981). An efficient algorithm for the two-dimensional placement problem in electrical circuit layout. IEEE Trans. on Circuits and Systems, CAS-28(1), 12-18] is a good iterative optimization algorithm. In this article, an improved force directed relaxation (IFDR) method for standard cell placement is presented, which provides a more flexible and efficient cell location adjustment scheme and a more extensive searching scale for better iterative placement optimization than the FDR method. A new heuristic algorithm based on local optimization is combined with the IFDR method to improve the placement. Experiments on the Microelectronics Center of North Carolina (MCNC) standard cell benchmarks [http://www.cbl.ncsu.edu/pub/Benchmark_ dirs/Layout Synth92/] have been done, and the results show that total wire length is reduced up to 25% and by an average of 16% in comparison with that from the placement algorithm of TimberWolf7.0

Average Power Handling Capability of Corrugated Slow-Wave Transmission Lines

In this article, the average power handling capability (APHC) of corrugated slow-wave transmission lines (SWTLs) is investigated. Firstly, the attenuation constants of conductor and dielectric are extracted by the multiline method. Secondly, the thermal resistance of corrugated SWTLs is analyzed based on the constant-angle model. To deal with the non-uniform corrugated structure of SWTLs, the concept of average heat-spreading width (AHSW) is introduced. Finally, the APHC of the corrugated SWTL is calculated using the attenuation constant and the thermal resistance. In addition, the APHC considering the temperature-dependent resistivity of metal conductor is also presented. For validation, the APHCs of SWTLs with different geometric parameters are evaluated. The results agree well with those obtained by the commercial software

Boosting hydrogen evolution on MoS2 via co-confining selenium in surface and cobalt in inner layer

The lack of efficient, inexpensive catalysts hinders large-scale application of hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). Here, the authors report a MoS2 nanofoam catalyst with co-confined Se in the surface and Co in the inner layer, exhibiting high large-current-density HER activity and durability