A 5.9-GHz voltage-controlled ring oscillator in 0.18-/spl mu/m CMOS

This paper presents the design of three- and nine-stage voltage-controlled ring oscillators that were fabricated in TSMC 0.18-/spl mu/m CMOS technology with oscillation frequencies up to 5.9 GHz. The circuits use a multiple-pass loop architecture and delay stages with cross-coupled FETs to aid in the switching speed and to improve the noise parameters. Measurements show that the oscillators have linear frequency-voltage characteristics over a wide tuning range, with the three- and nine-stage rings resulting in frequency ranges of 5.16-5.93 GHz and 1.1-1.86 GHz, respectively. The measured phase noise of the nine-stage ring oscillator was -105.5 dBc/Hz at a 1-MHz offset from a 1.81-GHz center frequency, whereas the value for the three-stage ring oscillator was simulated to be -99.5 dBc/Hz at a 1-MHz offset from a 5.79-GHz center frequency.     

A 40-GHz frequency divider in 0.18-/spl mu/m CMOS technology

An analysis of regenerative dividers predicts the required phase shift or selectivity for proper operation. A divider topology is introduced that employs resonance techniques by means of on-chip spiral inductors to tune out the device capacitances. Configured as two cascaded /spl divide/2 stages, the circuit achieves a frequency range of 2.3 GHz at 40 GHz while consuming 31 mW from a 2.5-V supply.     

A 32-GHz non-uniform distributed amplifier in 0.18-/spl mu/m CMOS

This letter presents a fully integrated distributed amplifier in a standard 0.18-/spl mu/m CMOS technology. By employing a nonuniform architecture for the synthetic transmission lines, the proposed distributed amplifier exhibits enhanced performance in terms of gain and bandwidth. Drawing a dc current of 45mA from a 2.2-V supply voltage, the fabricated circuit exhibits 9.5-dB pass-band gain with a bandwidth of 32GHz while maintaining good input and output return losses over the entire frequency band. With a compact layout technique, the chip size of the distributed amplifier including the testing pads is 940/spl times/860/spl mu/m/sup 2/.     

K-band low-noise amplifiers using 0.18 /spl mu/m CMOS technology

Two K-Band low-noise amplifiers (LNAs) are designed and implemented in a standard 0.18 /spl mu/m CMOS technology. The 24 GHz LNA has demonstrated a 12.86 dB gain and a 5.6 dB noise figure (NF) at 23.5 GHz. The 26 GHz LNA achieves an 8.9 dB gain at the peak gain frequency of 25.7 GHz and a 6.93 dB NF at 25 GHz. The input referred third-order intercept point (IIP3) is >+2 dBm for both LNAs with a current consumption of 30 mA from a 1.8 V power supply. To our knowledge, the LNAs show the highest operation frequencies ever reported for LNAs in a standard CMOS process.     

Record Q symmetrical inductors for 10-GHz LC-VCOs in 0.18-/spl mu/m gate-length CMOS

We report a single-loop inductor suitable for integration in a differential voltage-controlled oscillator (LC-VCO) with 0.6-nH inductance and record quality factors of 18 at 10 GHz and 20 at 15 GHz fabricated in an industrial CMOS process on a 10 /spl Omega/cm substrate. A new lumped element model which accurately describes the inductor performance without the need for frequency-dependent elements is presented. During the course of this work, we found that a patterned ground shield significantly improves the inductor performance at these frequencies, but only when the polysilicon bars are connected from the center of the inductor.     

A 2.4-GHz 0.18-/spl mu/m CMOS self-biased cascode power amplifier

A two-stage self-biased cascode power amplifier in 0.18-/spl mu/m CMOS process for Class-1 Bluetooth application is presented. The power amplifier provides 23-dBm output power with a power-added efficiency (PAE) of 42% at 2.4 GHz. It has a small signal gain of 38 dB and a large signal gain of 31 dB at saturation. This is the highest gain reported for a two-stage design in CMOS at the 0.8-2.4-GHz frequency range. A novel self-biasing and bootstrapping technique is presented that relaxes the restriction due to hot carrier degradation in power amplifiers and alleviates the need to use thick-oxide transistors that have poor RF performance compared with the standard transistors available in the same process. The power amplifier shows no performance degradation after ten days of continuous operation under maximum output power at 2.4-V supply. It is demonstrated that a sliding bias technique can be used to both significantly improve the PAE at mid-power range and linearize the power amplifier. By using the sliding bias technique, the PAE at 16 dBm is increased from 6% to 19%, and the gain variation over the entire power range is reduced from 7 to 0.6 dB.     

A 2.4-GHz RF sampling receiver front-end in 0.18-/spl mu/m CMOS

This paper presents an integrable RF sampling receiver front-end architecture, based on a switched-capacitor (SC) RF sampling downconversion (RFSD) filter, for WLAN applications in a 2.4-GHz band. The RFSD filter test chip is fabricated in a 0.18-/spl mu/m CMOS technology and the measurement results show a successful realization of RF sampling, quadrature downconversion, tunable anti-alias filtering, downconversion to baseband, and decimation of the sampling rate. By changing the input sampling rate, the RFSD filter can be tuned to different RF channels. A maximum input sampling rate of 1072 MS/s has been achieved. A single-phase clock is used for the quadrature downconversion and the bandpass operation is realized by a 23-tap FIR filter. The RFSD filter has an IIP/sub 3/ of +5.5 dBm, a gain of -1 dB, and more than 17 dB rejection of alias bands. The measured image rejection is 59 dB and the sampling clock jitter is 0.64 ps. The test chip consumes 47 mW in the analog part and 40 mW in the digital part. It occupies an area of 1 mm/sup 2/.     

A 0.3-25-GHz ultra-wideband mixer using commercial 0.18-/spl mu/m CMOS technology

An ultra-wideband mixer using standard complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technology was first proposed in this paper. This broadband mixer achieves measured conversion gain of 11 /spl plusmn/ 1.5 dB with a bandwidth of 0.3 to 25 GHz. The mixer was fabricated in a commercial 0.18-/spl mu/m CMOS technology and demonstrated the highest frequency and bandwidth of operation. It also presented better gain-bandwidth-product performance compared with that of GaAs-based HBT technologies. The chip area is 0.8 /spl times/ 1 mm/sup 2/.     

A Bluetooth radio in 0.18-/spl mu/m CMOS

This paper describes the results of an implementation of a Bluetooth radio in a 0.18-/spl mu/m CMOS process. A low-IF image-reject conversion architecture is used for the receiver. The transmitter uses direct IQ-upconversion. The VCO runs at 4.8-5.0 GHz, thus facilitating the generation of 0/spl deg/ and 90/spl deg/ signals for both the receiver and transmitter. By using an inductor-less LNA and the extensive use of mismatch simulations, the smallest silicon area for a Bluetooth radio implementation so far can be reached: 5.5 mm/sup 2/. The transceiver consumes 30 mA in receive mode and 35 mA in transmit mode from a 2.5 to 3.0-V power supply. As the radio operates on the same die as baseband and SW, the crosstalk-on-silicon is an important issue. This crosstalk problem was taken into consideration from the start of the project. Sensitivity was measured at -82 dBm.     

17-GHz 50-60 mW power amplifiers in 0.13-/spl mu/m standard CMOS

Two versions of power amplifiers with different output matching approaches for the 17-GHz band were realized in 0.13-/spl mu/m standard digital CMOS technology with 1.5-V supply voltage. The power amplifier with an external matching network delivers 17.8-dBm saturated output power with 15.6% power added efficiency (PAE). The small-signal gain is 11.5 dB. The fully integrated power amplifier delivers 17.1-dBm saturated output power with 9.3% PAE. The small-signal gain is 14.5 dB. No external radio frequency components are required.     

A 1-V 24-GHz 17.5-mW phase-locked loop in a 0.18-/spl mu/m CMOS process

A 1-V 24-GHz 17.5-mW fully integrated phase-locked loop employing a transformer-feedback voltage-controlled oscillator and a stacked divide-by-2 frequency divider for low voltage and low power is presented. Implemented in a 0.18-/spl mu/m CMOS process and operated at 24 GHz with a 1-V supply, the PLL measures in-band phase noise of -106.3 dBc at a frequency offset of 100 kHz and out-of-band phase noise of -119.1 dBc/Hz at a frequency offset of 10 MHz. The PLL dissipates 17.5 mW and occupies a core area of 0.55 mm/sup 2/.     

A 1-V transformer-feedback low-noise amplifier for 5-GHz wireless LAN in 0.18-/spl mu/m CMOS

A low-noise amplifier (LNA) uses low-loss monolithic transformer feedback to neutralize the gate-drain overlap capacitance of a field-effect transistor (FET). A differential implementation in 0.18-/spl mu/m CMOS technology, designed for 5-GHz wireless local-area networks (LANs), achieves a measured power gain of 14.2 dB, noise figure (NF, 50 /spl Omega/) of 0.9 dB, and third-order input intercept point (IIP3) of +0.9 dBm at 5.75 GHz, while consuming 16 mW from a 1-V supply. The feedback design is benchmarked to a 5.75-GHz cascode LNA fabricated in the same technology that realizes 14.1-dB gain, 1.8-dB NF, and IIP3 of +4.2 dBm, while dissipating 21.6 mW at 1.8 V.     

A 3-to-8-GHz fast-hopping frequency synthesizer in 0.18-/spl mu/m CMOS technology

A frequency synthesizer incorporating one single-sideband (SSB) mixer generates seven bands of clock distributed from 3 to 8GHz with 1-ns switching time. An efficient frequency synthesizing technique producing balanced bands around one center frequency is employed, and the SSB mixer uses double degeneration topology to increase the linearity. Fabricated in 0.18-/spl mu/m CMOS technology, this circuit achieves a sideband rejection of 37 dB while consuming 48 mW from a 2.2-V supply.     

A 0.18-/spl mu/m CMOS bioluminescence detection lab-on-chip

The paper describes a bioluminescence detection lab-on-chip consisting of a fiber-optic faceplate with immobilized luminescent reporters/probes that is directly coupled to an optical detection and processing CMOS system-on-chip (SoC) fabricated in a 0.18-/spl mu/m process. The lab-on-chip is customized for such applications as determining gene expression using reporter gene assays, determining intracellular ATP, and sequencing DNA. The CMOS detection SoC integrates an 8 /spl times/ 16 pixel array having the same pitch as the assay site array, a 128-channel 13-bit ADC, and column-level DSP, and is fabricated in a 0.18-/spl mu/m image sensor process. The chip is capable of detecting emission rates below 10/sup -6/ lux over 30 s of integration time at room temperature. In addition to directly coupling and matching the assay site array to the photodetector array, this low light detection is achieved by a number of techniques, including the use of very low dark current photodetectors, low-noise differential circuits, high-resolution analog-to-digital conversion, background subtraction, correlated multiple sampling, and multiple digitizations and averaging to reduce read noise. Electrical and optical characterization results as well as preliminary biological testing results are reported.     

A 1.8-V 2.4/5.15-GHz dual-band LCVCO in 0.18-/spl mu/m CMOS technology

A dual band, fully integrated, low phase-noise and low-power LC voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) operating at the 2.4-GHz industrial scientific and medical band and 5.15-GHz unlicensed national information infrastructure band has been demonstrated in an 0.18-/spl mu/m CMOS process. At 1.8-V power supply voltage, the power dissipation is only 5.4mW for a 2.4-GHz band and 8mW for a 5.15-GHz band. The proposed VCO features phase-noise of -135dBc/Hz at 3-MHz offset frequency away from the carrier frequency of 2.74GHz and -126dBc/Hz at 3-MHz offset frequency away from 5.49GHz. The oscillator is tuned from 2.2 to 2.85GHz in the low band (2.4-GHz band) and from 4.4 to 5.7GHz in the high band (5.15-GHz band).     

A 2.4-GHz dual-mode 0.18-/spl mu/m CMOS transceiver for Bluetooth and 802.11b

High-level integration of the Bluetooth and 802.11b WLAN radio systems in the 2.4-GHz ISM band is demonstrated in scaled CMOS. A dual-mode RF transceiver IC implements all transmit and receive functions including the low-noise amplifier (LNA), 0-dBm power amplifier, up/down mixers, synthesizers, channel filtering, and limiting/automatic gain control for both standards in a single chip without doubling the required silicon area to reduce the combined system cost. This is achieved by sharing the frequency up/down conversion circuits in the RF section and performing the required baseband channel filtering and gain functions with just one set of reconfigurable channel filter and amplifier for both modes. A chip implemented in 0.18-/spl mu/m CMOS occupies 4/spl times/4 mm/sup 2/ including pad and consumes 60 and 40 mA for RX and TX modes, respectively. The dual-mode receiver exhibits -80-dBm sensitivity at 0.1% BER in Bluetooth mode and at 12-dB SNR in WLAN mode.     

A 2.5-10-GHz clock multiplier unit with 0.22-ps RMS jitter in standard 0.18-/spl mu/m CMOS

This paper demonstrates a low-jitter clock multiplier unit that generates a 10-GHz output clock from a 2.5-GHz reference clock. An integrated 10-GHz LC oscillator is locked to the input clock, using a simple and fast phase detector circuit that overcomes the speed limitation of a conventional tri-state phase frequency detector due to the lack of an internal feedback loop. A frequency detector guarantees PLL locking without degenerating jitter performance. The clock multiplier is implemented in a standard 0.18-/spl mu/m CMOS process and achieves a jitter generation of 0.22 ps while consuming 100 mW power from a 1.8-V supply.     

A low-voltage folded-switching mixer in 0.18-/spl mu/m CMOS

Scaling of CMOS technologies has a great impact on analog design. The most severe consequence is the reduction of the voltage supply. In this paper, a low voltage, low power, AC-coupled folded-switching mixer with current-reuse is presented. The main advantages of the introduced mixer topology are: high voltage gain, moderate noise figure, moderate linearity, and operation at low supply voltages. Insight into the mixer operation is given by analyzing voltage gain, noise figure (NF), linearity (IIP3), and DC stability. The mixer is designed and implemented in 0.18-/spl mu/m CMOS technology with metal-insulator-metal (MIM) capacitors as an option. The active chip area is 160 /spl mu/m/spl times/200 /spl mu/m. At 2.4 GHz a single side band (SSB) noise figure of 13.9 dB, a voltage gain of 11.9 dB and an IIP3 of -3 dBm are measured at a supply voltage of 1 V and with a power consumption of only 3.2 mW. At a supply voltage of 1.8 V, an SSB noise figure of 12.9 dB, a voltage gain of 16 dB and an IIP3 of 1 dBm are measured at a power consumption of 8.1 mW.     

A matrix amplifier in 0.18-/spl mu/m SOI CMOS

A fully integrated matrix amplifier with two rows and four columns (2-by-4) fabricated in a three-layer metal 0.18-/spl mu/m silicon-on-insulator (SOI) CMOS process is presented. It exhibits an average pass-band gain of 15 dB and a unity-gain bandwidth of 12.5 GHz. The input and output ports are matched to 50 /spl Omega/ using m-derived half sections; the measured S/sub 11/ and S/sub 22/ values exceed -7 and -12 dB, respectively. Integrated in 2.0/spl times/2.9mm/sup 2/, it dissipates 233.4 mW total from 2.4- and 1.8-V power supplies.     

Robust sound localization in 0.18 /spl mu/m CMOS

This paper presents a hardware implementation of a sound localization algorithm that localizes a single sound source by using the information gathered by two separated microphones. This is achieved through estimating the time delay of arrival (TDOA) of sound at the two microphones. We have used a TDOA algorithm known as the "phase transform" to minimize the effects of reverberations and noise from the environment. Simplifications to the chosen TDOA algorithm were made in order to replace complex operations, such as the cosine function, with less expensive ones, such as iterative additions. The custom digital signal processor implementing this algorithm was designed in a 0.18-/spl mu/m CMOS process and tested successfully. The test chip is capable of localizing the direction of a sound source within 2.2/spl deg/ of accuracy, utilizing approximately 30 mW of power and 6.25 mm/sup 2/ of silicon area.