A Ku-band monolithic receiver for DVB-S applications

Despite the incessant progress observed in fixed and wireless terrestrial communication networks, satellite systems remain an appealing solution for broadcasting, point-to-point, and multicasting telecommunications, because of undemanding customer equipment and wide coverage capability. In this scenario, digital video broadcasting via satellite (DVB-S) is recognized as one of the main market-attractive telecommunication fields. Up to now, expensive discrete GaAs HEMT or FET devices have been used to build up circuitry for satellite applications at Ku-band. This article presents the first 12-GHz monolithic receiver for DVB-S applications, implemented in a low-cost silicon bipolar technology. The receiver is based on a superheterodyne architecture, employing a fully integrated LO. To comply with the severe LO phase noise requirement of -101 dBc/Hz at a 100 kHz offset from the carrier, an innovative VCO topology was used implementing a three-metal-layer integrated transformer. The performance parameters of the integrated receiver fulfill DVB-S standard specifications.     

A 25-GHz ultra-low phase noise InGaP/GaAs HBT VCO

A 25-GHz monolithic voltage controlled oscillator (VCO) has been designed and fabricated in a commercial InGaP/GaAs heterojunction bipolar transistor (HBT) process. This balanced VCO has a novel topology using a feedback /spl pi/-network and a common-emitter transistor configuration. Ultra-low phase noise is achieved: -106 dBc/Hz and -130 dBc/Hz at 100kHz and 1-MHz offset frequency, respectively. To the authors' knowledge, this is the lowest phase noise achieved in a monolithic microwave integrated circuit (MMIC) VCO at such high frequency. The single-ended output power is -1 dBm. It can be tuned between 25.33GHz and 25.75GHz using the base-collector junction capacitor of the HBT as a varactor. The dc power consumption is 90mW for a 9-V supply. An excellent figure-of-merit of -195 dBc/Hz is obtained.     

Balanced Colpitt oscillator MMICs designed for ultra-low phase noise

Balanced voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) monolithic microwave integrated circuits (MMICs) based on a coupled Colpitt topology with a fully integrated tank are presented utilizing SiGe heterojunction bipolar transistor (HBT) and InGaP/GaAs HBT technologies. Minimum phase noise is obtained for all designs by optimization of the tank circuit including the varactor, maximizing the tank amplitude, and designing the VCO for Class C operation. Fundamental and second harmonic VCOs are evaluated. A minimum phase noise of less than -112 dBc at an output power of 5.5 dBm is achieved at 100-kHz carrier offset and 6.4-GHz oscillation frequency for the fundamental InGaP/GaAs HBT VCO. The second harmonic VCO achieves a minimum measured phase noise of -120 dBc at 100 kHz at 13 GHz. To our best knowledge, this is the lowest reported phase noise to date for a varactor-based VCO with a fully integrated tank. The fundamental frequency SiGe HBT oscillator achieves a phase noise of -108 dBc at 100 kHz at 5 GHz. All MMICs are fabricated in commercial foundry MMIC processes.     

A 2.7-V 900-MHz/1.9-GHz dual-band transceiver IC for digitalwireless communication

A 2.7-V 900-MHz/1.9-GHz dual-band transceiver IC consisting of receive, transmit, and local oscillator (LO) sections is presented. The transmit section achieves an unwanted sideband suppression of -43 dBc, LO leakage of -59 dBc, and third-order spurious rejection of -70 dBc. The transmit output noise level is -165 dBc/Hz at a 20-MHz offset from the carrier. The on-chip very high-frequency oscillator has a phase-noise level of -106 dBc/Hz at 100-kHz offset when operating at 800 MHz. The receive section has 36 dB of gain with 36 dB of gain range in 12-dB steps. The transceiver IC has been fabricated using a 25-GHz f_t silicon bipolar process and is designed to operate over a supply-voltage range of 2.7-5.0 V     

Development of 60-GHz front-end circuits for a high-data-rate communication system

Recent results from a Swedish program for development of 60-GHz monolithic microwave integrated circuits (MMICs) for high-data-rate communication links are presented. Front-end circuits such as mixers, amplifiers, frequency multipliers, IF amplifiers with gain control, and voltage-controlled oscillators (VCOs) have been realized utilizing GaAs PHEMT and MHEMT technologies. A newly developed 7.5-GHz coupled Colpitt VCO shows a minimum phase noise of -95 dBc at 100 kHz offset. A second-harmonic 14-GHz VCO shows a minimum phase noise of less than -90 dBc at 100 kHz. A novel balanced 7-28-GHz MMIC frequency quadrupler is described and compared with a single-ended quadrupler at the same input frequencies. To demonstrate its feasibility and potential application, the quadrupler is combined with the Colpitt VCO and the output characteristics of the resulting 30-GHz MMIC source are measured. A three-stage MHEMT wide-band amplifier covering 43-64 GHz with a gain of 24 dB, a minimum noise figure of 2.5 dB, and a passband ripple of 2 dB is also described. In future 60-GHz systems for mass markets where cost is of utmost importance, Si-based technologies, especially CMOS, are highly interesting. Some recent circuit results based on a 90-nm CMOS technology are also reported.     

The effect of varactor nonlinearity on the phase noise ofcompletely integrated VCOs

This work discusses variations in phase noise over the tuning range of a completely integrated 1.9-GHz differential voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) fabricated in a 0.5-μm bipolar process with 25-GHz f _t. The design had a phase noise of -103 dBc/Hz at 100 kHz offset at the top of the tuning range, but the noise performance degraded to -96 dBc/Hz at 100 kHz at the bottom of the tuning range. It was determined that nonlinearities of the on-chip varactors, which led to excessively high VCO gain at the bottom of the tuning range, were primarily responsible for this degradation in performance. The VCO has a power output of -5 dBm per side. Calculations predict phase noise with only a small error and provide design insight for minimizing this effect. The oscillator core drew 6.4 mA and the output buffer circuitry drew 6 mA, both from a 3.3-V supply     

5-GHz SiGe HBT monolithic radio transceiver with tunable filtering

A wide-band CDMA-compliant fully integrated 5-GHz radio transceiver was realized in SiGe heterojunction-bipolar-transistor technology with on-chip tunable voltage controlled oscillator (VCO) tracking filters. It allows for wide-band modulation schemes with bandwidth up to 20 MHz. The receiver has a single-ended single-sideband noise figure of 5.9 dB, more than 40 dB on-chip image rejection, an input compression point of -22 dBm, and larger than 70 dB local-oscillator-RF isolation. The phase noise of the on-chip VCO is -100 and -128 dBc/Hz at 100 kHz and 5 MHz offset from the carrier, respectively. The transmitter output compression point is +10 dBm. An image rejection better than 40 dB throughout the VCO tracking range has been demonstrated in the transmitter with all spurious signals 40 dB below the carrier. The differential transceiver draws 125 mA in transmit mode and 45 mA in receive mode from a 3.5-V supply     

A compact 43-GHz monolithic differential VCO in 0.5-/spl mu/m InP DHBT technology

A compact monolithic integrated differential voltage controlled oscillator (VCO) using 0.5-/spl mu/m emitter width InP/InGaAs double-heterostructure bipolar transistors with a total chip size of 0.42 mm /spl times/ 0.46 mm is realized by using cross-coupled configuration for extremely high frequency satellite communications system applications. The device performance of F/sub max/ greater than 320 GHz at a current density of 5 mA//spl mu/m/sup 2/ and 5-V BVceo allows us to achieve a low phase noise 42.5-GHz fundamental VCO with -0.67-dBm output power. The VCO exhibits the phase noise of -106.8 dBc/Hz at 1-MHz offset and -122.3 dBc/Hz at 10-MHz offset from the carrier frequency.     

A Q-band low phase noise monolithic AlGaN/GaN HEMT VCO

A Q-band 40-GHz GaN monolithic microwave integrated circuit voltage controlled oscillator (VCO) based on AlGaN/GaN high electron mobility transistor technology has been demonstrated. The GaN VCO delivered an output power of +25dBm with phase noise of -92dBc/Hz at 100-KHz offset, and -120dBc/Hz at 1-MHz offset. To the best of our knowledge, this represents the state-of-the-art for GaN VCOs in terms of frequency, output power, and phase noise performance. This work demonstrates the potential for the use of GaN technology for high frequency, high power, and low phase noise frequency sources for military and commercial applications.     

基于单片机控制的频率综合器设计

以ADF4360芯片为核心,设计实现了频率综合器作为1.95 GHz一次变频超外差射频接收机的本振部分,并制作了单片机控制电路。经测试,可以在1.6GHz～1.95GHz范围内以0.5MHz为步长调节输出本振信号频率。在频率为1.9GHz时,相位噪声为-68dBc/Hz（1kHzoffset）、-71dBc/Hz（10kHz offset）、-110dBc/Hz（100kHz offset）、-115dBc/Hz（1MHz off-set）。频率偏差小于50kHz。     

A 5-GHz radio front-end with automatically Q-tuned notch filter and VCO

A low-voltage receiver front-end for 5-GHz radio applications is presented. The receiver consists of a low-noise amplifier (LNA) with notch filter, a voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO), and a mixer. The LNA/notch filter has an automatic Q-tuning circuit integrated with it to provide good image rejection. On-chip transformers are used extensively in the receiver to improve performance and facilitate low-voltage operation. The receiver has a gain of 19.8 dB, noise figure of 4.5 dB, a third-order input intercept point (IIP3) of -11.5 dBm, and an image rejection of 59 dB, and the VCO had a phase noise of -116 dBc/Hz at 1-MHz offset.     

A Fully Integrated Direct-Conversion Receiver for CDMA and GPS Applications

This paper describes a fully integrated zero-IF receiver for cellular CDMA and GPS applications. The single-chip zero-IF receiver integrates the entire signal path for CDMA and GPS bands, including a low-noise amplifier (LNA), I/Q down-converters, baseband channel selection filters (CSFs), a voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO), and a local oscillator (LO) distribution circuit for each band. The cellular-band LNA achieves a noise figure (NF) of 1.2 dB, input third-order intercept point (IIP3) of 11 dBm, and gain of 15.5 dB. Cellular I/Q down-converter and baseband circuitries show 9-dB composite NF, 9 dBm IIP3 and 60-dBm input second-order intercept point (IIP2) without IIP2 calibration. The measured LO leakage is less than -110 dBm at LNA input. The phase noise of the cellular VCO is -134 dBc/Hz at 900-kHz offset with 1.76-GHz carrier frequency. Total GPS signal path achieves NF of 1.7 dB and gain of 74 dB with 42-mA current. The receiver is fabricated in a 0.35-mum SiGe BiCMOS process and packaged in a 6 mm times 6 mm 40-pin micro-lead-frame. Handset measurements report that the receiver meets or exceeds all of the CDMA-2000 requirements     

A low-power low-phase-noise LC VCO with MEMS Cu inductors

A 2-3 GHz CMOS inductance-capacitance (LC) voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) integrated with high-Q micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) Cu inductors is reported. While dissipating only 6.3 mW, a phase noise of -121 dBc/Hz at 600 kHz offset from 2.78 GHz carrier is achieved. This MEMS VCO has the largest power-frequency normalized figure-of-merit (12.5 dB) among the Si bipolar and CMOS LC VCOs.     

A 1.2-V RF front-end with on-chip VCO for PCS 1900 direct conversion receiver in 0.13-/spl mu/m CMOS

In this paper, a 1.2-V RF front-end realized for the personal communications services (PCS) direct conversion receiver is presented. The RF front-end comprises a low-noise amplifier (LNA), quadrature mixers, and active RC low-pass filters with gain control. Quadrature local oscillator (LO) signals are generated on chip by a double-frequency voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) and frequency divider. A current-mode interface between the downconversion mixer output and analog baseband input together with a dynamic matching technique simultaneously improves the mixer linearity, allows the reduction of flicker noise due to the mixer switches, and minimizes the noise contribution of the analog baseband. The dynamic matching technique is employed to suppress the flicker noise of the common-mode feedback (CMFB) circuit utilized at the mixer output, which otherwise would dominate the low-frequency noise of the mixer. Various low-voltage circuit techniques are employed to enhance both the mixer second- and third-order linearity, and to lower the flicker noise. The RF front-end is fabricated in a 0.13-/spl mu/m CMOS process utilizing only standard process options. The RF front-end achieves a voltage gain of 50 dB, noise figure of 3.9 dB when integrated from 100 Hz to 135 kHz, IIP3 of -9 dBm, and at least IIP2 of +30dBm without calibration. The 4-GHz VCO meets the PCS 1900 phase noise specifications and has a phase noise of -132dBc/Hz at 3-MHz offset.     

A 5-GHz fully integrated full PMOS low-phase-noise LC VCO

A 5-GHz fully integrated, full PMOS, low-phase-noise and low-power differential voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) is presented. This circuit is implemented in a 0.35-/spl mu/m four-metal BiCMOS SiGe process. At 2.7-V power supply voltage and a total power dissipation of only 13.5 mW, the proposed VCO features a worst case phase noise of -97 dBc/Hz and -117 dBc/Hz at 100 kHz and 1 MHz frequency offset, respectively. The oscillator is tuned from 5.13 to 5.68 GHz with a tuning voltage varying from 0 to 2.7 V.     

An Integrated 5–2.5-GHz Direct-Injection Locked Quadrature LC VCO

This letter presents an integrated direct-injection locked quadrature voltage controlled oscillator (VCO), consisted of a 5-GHz VCO integrated with injection locked LC frequency dividers for low-power quadrature generation. The circuit is implemented using a standard 0.18-mum CMOS process. The differential VCO is a full PMOS Colpitts oscillator, and the frequency divider is performed by adding an injection nMOS between the differential outputs of complementary cross-coupled np-core LC VCO. The measurement results show that at the supply voltage of 1.8-V, the master 5-GHz VCO is tunable from 4.73 to 5.74GHz, and the slave 2.5-GHz VCO is tunable from 2.36 to 2.87GHz. The measured phase noise of master VCO is -118.2dBc/Hz while the locked quadrature output phase noise is -124.4dBc/Hz at 1-MHz offset frequency, which is 6.2dB lower than the master VCO. The core power consumptions are 7.8 and 8.7mW at master and slave VCOs, respectively     

A low-phase-noise voltage-controlled oscillator for 17-GHz applications

A silicon bipolar voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) for 17-GHz applications is presented. The VCO is composed of a core oscillating at 9GHz followed by a frequency doubler. It adopts a transformer-based topology to obtain both wide tuning range and low noise performance. The VCO exhibits a tuning range of 4.1GHz from 16.4 to 20.5GHz and a phase noise as low as -109dBc/Hz at a 1-MHz frequency offset from a carrier of 18.5GHz.     

11-GHz CMOS differential VCO with back-gate transformer feedback

A fully integrated back-gate transformer feedback CMOS differential voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) has been designed for high-frequency and low-phase noise operation using an 0.18-/spl mu/m CMOS process. The proposed VCO topology utilizes the monolithic transformer feedback configuration from the drain to the back-gate of the switching transistors in VCO. The VCO operating in an 11-GHz band shows the phase noise of -109dBc/Hz at 1-MHz offset, and draws around 3.8mA in the differential core circuits from a 1.8-V power supply.     

5-GHz Low Phase-Noise CMOS VCO Integrated With a Micromachined Switchable Differential Inductor

A 5-GHz CMOS voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) integrated with a micromachined switchable differential inductor is reported in a 0.18 mum radio frequency-CMOS-based microelectromechanical system technology. The power consumption of the core is about 8 mW at the supply voltage of 1.8 V. A total tuning range of 470 MHz (from 5.13 GHz to 5.60 GHz) is achieved as the tuning voltage ranging from 0 V to 1.8 V. In the practical tuning range, the measured phase noise performances at 1 MHz offset are less than -125 dBc/Hz and -126 dBc/Hz when the inductor switch is turned on and off, respectively. The figure-of-merit is better than -190 dB. When compared with a contrast VCO circuit that utilizes a standard switchable differential inductor, this oscillator reaches a phase noise improvement of around 3 dB as the switch is turned on. Around 1-dB on-off phase noise difference can be achievable.     

新型复合沟道Al0.3Ga0.7N/Al0.05Ga0.95N/GaN HEMT低相位噪声微波单片集成压控振荡器

设计并研制了一种新型复合沟道Al0.3Ga0.7N/Al0.05Ga0.95N/GaN HEMT(CC-HEMT)微波单片集成压控振荡器(VCO),且测试了电路的性能.CC-HEMT的栅长为1μm,栅宽为100μm.叉指金属-半导体-金属(MSM)变容二极管被设计用于调谐VCO频率.为提高螺旋电感的Q值,聚酰亚胺介质被插入在电感金属层与外延在蓝宝石上GaN层之间.当CC-HEMT的直流偏置为Vgs=-3V,Vds=6V,变容二极管的调谐电压从5.5V到8.5V时,VCO的频率变化从7.04GHz到7.29GHz,平均输出功率为10dBm,平均功率附加效率为10.4%.当加在变容二极管上电压为6.7V时,测得的相位噪声为-86.25dBc/Hz(在频偏100KHz时)和-108dB/Hz(在频偏1MHz时),这个结果也是整个调谐范围的平均值.据我们所知,这个相位噪声测试结果是文献报道中基于GaN HEMT单片VCO的最好结果.