Matching Items (7)
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- All Subjects: Radio--Transmitters and transmission.
- Creators: Ozev, Sule
- Creators: Aberle, James T., 1961-
Description
High speed current-steering DACs with high linearity are needed in today's applications such as wired and wireless communications, instrumentation, radar, and other direct digital synthesis (DDS) applications. However, a trade-off exists between the speed and resolution of Nyquist rate current-steering DACs. As the resolution increases, more transistor area is required to meet matching requirements for optimal linearity and thus, the overall speed of the DAC is limited.
In this thesis work, a 12-bit current-steering DAC was designed with current sources scaled below the required matching size to decrease the area and increase the overall speed of the DAC. By scaling the current sources, however, errors due to random mismatch between current sources will arise and additional calibration hardware is necessary to ensure 12-bit linearity. This work presents how to implement a self-calibration DAC that works to fix amplitude errors while maintaining a lower overall area. Additionally, the DAC designed in this thesis investigates the implementation feasibility of a data-interleaved architecture. Data interleaving can increase the total bandwidth of the DACs by 2 with an increase in SQNR by an additional 3 dB.
The final results show that the calibration method can effectively improve the linearity of the DAC. The DAC is able to run up to 400 MSPS frequencies with a 75 dB SFDR performance and above 87 dB SFDR performance at update rates of 200 MSPS.
In this thesis work, a 12-bit current-steering DAC was designed with current sources scaled below the required matching size to decrease the area and increase the overall speed of the DAC. By scaling the current sources, however, errors due to random mismatch between current sources will arise and additional calibration hardware is necessary to ensure 12-bit linearity. This work presents how to implement a self-calibration DAC that works to fix amplitude errors while maintaining a lower overall area. Additionally, the DAC designed in this thesis investigates the implementation feasibility of a data-interleaved architecture. Data interleaving can increase the total bandwidth of the DACs by 2 with an increase in SQNR by an additional 3 dB.
The final results show that the calibration method can effectively improve the linearity of the DAC. The DAC is able to run up to 400 MSPS frequencies with a 75 dB SFDR performance and above 87 dB SFDR performance at update rates of 200 MSPS.
ContributorsJankunas, Benjamin (Author) / Bakkaloglu, Bertan (Thesis advisor) / Kitchen, Jennifer (Committee member) / Ozev, Sule (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
In this thesis, a Built-in Self Test (BiST) based testing solution is proposed to measure linear and non-linear impairments in the RF Transmitter path using analytical approach. Design issues and challenges with the impairments modeling and extraction in transmitter path are discussed. Transmitter is modeled for I/Q gain & phase mismatch, system non-linearity and DC offset using Matlab. BiST architecture includes a peak detector which includes a self mode mixer and 200 MHz filter. Self Mode mixing operation with filtering removes the high frequency signal contents and allows performing analysis on baseband frequency signals. Transmitter impairments were calculated using spectral analysis of output from the BiST circuitry using an analytical method. Matlab was used to simulate the system with known test impairments and impairment values from simulations were calculated based on system modeling in Mathematica. Simulated data is in good correlation with input test data along with very fast test time and high accuracy. The key contribution of the work is that, system impairments are extracted from transmitter response at baseband frequency using envelope detector hence eliminating the need of expensive high frequency ATE (Automated Test Equipments).
ContributorsGoyal, Nitin (Author) / Ozev, Sule (Thesis advisor) / Duman, Tolga (Committee member) / Bakkaloglu, Bertan (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
During the last decades the development of the transistor and its continuous down-scaling allowed the appearance of cost effective wireless communication systems. New generation wideband wireless mobile systems demand high linearity, low power consumption and the low cost devices. Traditional RF systems are mainly analog-based circuitry. Contrary to digital circuits, the technology scaling results in reduction on the maximum voltage swing which makes RF design very challenging. Pushing the interface between the digital and analog boundary of the RF systems closer to the antenna becomes an attractive trend for modern RF devices. In order to take full advantages of the deep submicron CMOS technologies and digital signal processing (DSP), there is a strong trend towards the development of digital transmitter where the RF upconversion is part of the digital-to-analog conversion (DAC). This thesis presents a new digital intermediate frequency (IF) to RF transmitter for 2GHz wideband code division multiple access (W-CDMA). The proposed transmitter integrates a 3-level digital IF current-steering cell, an up-conversion mixer with a tuned load and an RF variable gain amplifier (RF VGA) with an embedded finite impulse response (FIR) reconstruction filter in the up-conversion path. A 4th-order 1.5-bit IF bandpass sigma delta modulator (BP SDM) is designed to support in-band SNR while the out-of-band quantization noise due to the noise shaping is suppressed by the embedded reconstruction filter to meet spectrum emission mask and ACPR requirements. The RF VGA provides 50dB power scaling in 10-dB steps with less than 1dB gain error. The design is fabricated in a 0.18um CMOS technology with a total core area of 0.8 x 1.6 mm2. The IC delivers 0dBm output power at 2GHz and it draws approximately 120mA from a 1.8V DC supply at the maximum output power. The measurement results proved that a digital-intensive digital IF to RF converter architecture can be successfully employed for WCDMA transmitter application.
ContributorsHan, Yongping (Author) / Kiaei, Sayfe (Thesis advisor) / Yu, Hongyu (Committee member) / Bakkaloglu, Bertan (Committee member) / Aberle, James T., 1961- (Committee member) / Barnaby, Hugh (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
Built-in-Self-Test (BiST) for transmitters is a desirable choice since it eliminates the reliance on expensive instrumentation to do RF signal analysis. Existing on-chip resources, such as power or envelope detectors, or small additional circuitry can be used for BiST purposes. However, due to limited bandwidth, measurement of complex specifications, such as IQ imbalance, is challenging. In this work, a BiST technique to compute transmitter IQ imbalances using measurements out of a self-mixing envelope detector is proposed. Both the linear and non linear parameters of the RF transmitter path are extracted successfully. We first derive an analytical expression for the output signal. Using this expression, we devise test signals to isolate the effects of gain and phase imbalance, DC offsets, time skews and system nonlinearity from other parameters of the system. Once isolated, these parameters are calculated easily with a few mathematical operations. Simulations and hardware measurements show that the technique can provide accurate characterization of IQ imbalances. One of the glaring advantages of this method is that, the impairments are extracted from analyzing the response at baseband frequency and thereby eliminating the need of high frequency ATE (Automated Test Equipment).
ContributorsByregowda, Srinath (Author) / Ozev, Sule (Thesis advisor) / Cao, Yu (Committee member) / Yu, Hongbin (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
The high cut-off frequency of deep sub-micron CMOS technologies has enabled the integration of radio frequency (RF) transceivers with digital circuits. However, the challenging point is the integration of RF power amplifiers, mainly due to the low breakdown voltage of CMOS transistors. Silicon-on-insulator (SOI) metal semiconductor field effect transistors (MESFETs) have been introduced to remedy the limited headroom concern in CMOS technologies. The MESFETs presented in this thesis have been fabricated on different SOI-CMOS processes without making any change to the standard fabrication steps and offer 2-30 times higher breakdown voltage than the MOSFETs on the same process. This thesis explains the design steps of high efficiency and wideband RF transmitters using the proposed SOI-CMOS compatible MESFETs. This task involves DC and RF characterization of MESFET devices, along with providing a compact Spice model for simulation purposes. This thesis presents the design of several SOI-MESFET RF power amplifiers operating at 433, 900 and 1800 MHz with ~40% bandwidth. Measurement results show a peak power added efficiency (PAE) of 55% and a peak output power of 22.5 dBm. The RF-PAs were designed to operate in Class-AB mode to minimize the linearity degradation. Class-AB power amplifiers lead to poor power added efficiency, especially when fed with signals with high peak to average power ratio (PAPR) such as wideband code division multiple access (W-CDMA). Polar transmitters have been introduced to improve the efficiency of RF-PAs at backed-off powers. A MESFET based envelope tracking (ET) polar transmitter was designed and measured. A low drop-out voltage regulator (LDO) was used as the supply modulator of this polar transmitter. MESFETs are depletion mode devices; therefore, they can be configured in a source follower configuration to have better stability and higher bandwidth that MOSFET based LDOs. Measurement results show 350 MHz bandwidth while driving a 10 pF capacitive load. A novel polar transmitter is introduced in this thesis to alleviate some of the limitations associated with polar transmitters. The proposed architecture uses the backgate terminal of a partially depleted transistor on SOI process, which relaxes the bandwidth and efficiency requirements of the envelope amplifier in a polar transmitter. The measurement results of the proposed transmitter demonstrate more than three times PAE improvement at 6-dB backed-off output power, compared to the traditional RF transmitters.
ContributorsGhajar, Mohammad Reza (Author) / Thornton, Trevor (Thesis advisor) / Aberle, James T., 1961- (Committee member) / Bakkaloglu, Bertan (Committee member) / Goryll, Michael (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
Semiconductor device scaling has kept up with Moore's law for the past decades and they have been scaling by a factor of half every one and half years. Every new generation of device technology opens up new opportunities and challenges and especially so for analog design. High speed and low gain is characteristic of these processes and hence a tradeoff that can enable to get back gain by trading speed is crucial. This thesis proposes a solution that increases the speed of sampling of a circuit by a factor of three while reducing the specifications on analog blocks and keeping the power nearly constant. The techniques are based on the switched capacitor technique called Correlated Level Shifting. A triple channel Cyclic ADC has been implemented, with each channel working at a sampling frequency of 3.33MS/s and a resolution of 14 bits. The specifications are compared with that based on a traditional architecture to show the superiority of the proposed technique.
ContributorsSivakumar, Balasubramanian (Author) / Farahani, Bahar Jalali (Thesis advisor) / Garrity, Douglas (Committee member) / Bakkaloglu, Bertan (Committee member) / Aberle, James T., 1961- (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
RF transmitter manufacturers go to great extremes and expense to ensure that their product meets the RF output power requirements for which they are designed. Therefore, there is an urgent need for in-field monitoring of output power and gain to bring down the costs of RF transceiver testing and ensure product reliability. Built-in self-test (BIST) techniques can perform such monitoring without the requirement for expensive RF test equipment. In most BIST techniques, on-chip resources, such as peak detectors, power detectors, or envelope detectors are used along with frequency down conversion to analyze the output of the design under test (DUT). However, this conversion circuitry is subject to similar process, voltage, and temperature (PVT) variations as the DUT and affects the measurement accuracy. So, it is important to monitor BIST performance over time, voltage and temperature, such that accurate in-field measurements can be performed.
In this research, a multistep BIST solution using only baseband signals for test analysis is presented. An on-chip signal generation circuit, which is robust with respect to time, supply voltage, and temperature variations is used for self-calibration of the BIST system before the DUT measurement. Using mathematical modelling, an analytical expression for the output signal is derived first and then test signals are devised to extract the output power of the DUT. By utilizing a standard 180nm IBM7RF CMOS process, a 2.4GHz low power RF IC incorporated with the proposed BIST circuitry and on-chip test signal source is designed and fabricated. Experimental results are presented, which show this BIST method can monitor the DUT’s output power with +/- 0.35dB accuracy over a 20dB power dynamic range.
In this research, a multistep BIST solution using only baseband signals for test analysis is presented. An on-chip signal generation circuit, which is robust with respect to time, supply voltage, and temperature variations is used for self-calibration of the BIST system before the DUT measurement. Using mathematical modelling, an analytical expression for the output signal is derived first and then test signals are devised to extract the output power of the DUT. By utilizing a standard 180nm IBM7RF CMOS process, a 2.4GHz low power RF IC incorporated with the proposed BIST circuitry and on-chip test signal source is designed and fabricated. Experimental results are presented, which show this BIST method can monitor the DUT’s output power with +/- 0.35dB accuracy over a 20dB power dynamic range.
ContributorsGangula, Sudheer Kumar Reddy (Author) / Kitchen, Jennifer (Thesis advisor) / Ozev, Sule (Committee member) / Ogras, Umit Y. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015