VLSI for analog/digital communications

Present trends and future prospects are discussed, emphasizing the prospects for fuller VLSI integration of low-power digital radio, for applications such as in-building wireless radio receivers. The main concern is with the front end of the receiver, including continuous-time analog and sampled analog VLSI filtering, and technologies that can mix analog and digital on the same chip. Prospects for the use of bipolar complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (BiCMOS) technology in communications are examined. Continuous-time monolithic filtering is discussed. As an example of a central receiver/transmitter component that one would like to integrate monolithically, the frequency synthesizer is considered     

A self-aligned gate III-V heterostructure FET process forultrahigh-speed digital and mixed analog/digital LSI/VLSI circuits

A planar ion-implanted self-aligned gate process for the fabrication of high-speed digital and mixed analog/digital LSI/VLSI integrated circuits is reported. A 4-b analog-to-digital converter, a 2500-gate 8×8 multiplier/accumulator, and a 4500-gate 16×16 complex multiplier have been demonstrated using enhancement-mode n⁺ -(Al,Ga)As/MODFETs, superlattice MODFETs, and doped channel heterostructure field-effect transistors (FETs) whose epitaxial layers were grown by molecular-beam epitaxy. With nominal 1-μm gate-length devices, direct-coupled FET logic ring oscillators with realistic circuit structures have propagation delays of 30 ps/stage at a power dissipation of 1.2 mW/stage. In LSI circuit operation, these gates have delays of 89 ps/gate at a power dissipation of 1.38 mW/gate when loaded with an average fan-out of 2.5 gates and about 1000 μm of high-density interconnects. High-performance voltage comparator circuits operated at sampling rates greater than 2.5 GHz at Nyquist analog input rates and with static hysteresis of less than 1 mV at room temperature. Fully functional 4-b analog-to-digital circuits operating at frequencies up to 2 GHz were obtained     

A computational approach to VLSI analog design

A new technique for the design of analog VLSI is described. Borrowing from digital design technology concepts, an analog processor is described which can be digitally programmed to execute a small but powerful set of analog operations. At a very high level of abstraction these instructions can be used to perform mathematical processing on analog signals directly rather than through the traditional processing chain of sampling, A/D conversion, digital processing, and D/A conversion. A key feature of the technique is the conversion of signals into logarithmic form, and the practical problems associated with this are discussed and their solutions outlined. Finally implementation of these techniques in BiCMOS, CMOS, and bipolar technologies is discussed with conclusions.     

A computational approach to VLSI analog design

A new technique for the design of analog VLSI is described. Borrowing from digital design technology concepts, an analog processor is described which can be digitally programmed to execute a small but powerful set of analog operations. At a very high level of abstraction these instructions can be used to perform mathematical processing on analog signals directly rather than through the traditional processing chain of sampling, A/D conversion, digital processing, and D/A conversion. A key feature of the technique is the conversion of signals into logarithmic form, and the practical problems associated with this are discussed and their solutions outlined. Finally implementation of these techniques in BiCMOS, CMOS, and bipolar technologies is discussed with conclusions.     

Decoding in analog VLSI

The iterative decoding of state-of-the-art error correcting codes such as turbo codes is computationally demanding. It is argued that analog implementations of such decoders can be much more efficient than digital implementations. This article gives a tutorial introduction to research on this topic. It is estimated that analog decoders can outperform digital decoders by two orders of magnitude in speed and/or power consumption     

A 45-Mbit/s CMOS VLSI digital phase aligner

An eight-channel, 45-Mb/s digital phase aligner (DPA) has been fabricated in 2-μm CMOS. The device receives asynchronous serial data at a known average clock frequency and unknown phase, and phase-aligns it with a local clock of the same frequency for subsequent synchronous processing. The all-digital architecture of this device minimizes the need for external components and avoids reliance on analog MOS circuitry. Tracking over a phase excursion range of ±4-bit periods has been demonstrated     

Configurable CMOS multiplier/divider circuits for analog VLSI

The design of five simple CMOS opamp based multipler/divider circuits is presented. Each two opamp and six MOSFET transistor circuit simultaneously achieves four-quadrant multiplication and division. Applications of the new circuits in analog signal processing and neural networks are discussed. The multiplier/divider circuits are all insensitive to MOS intrinsic parasitic capacitances. They do, however, exhibit different sensitivities to opamp finite unity-gain bandwidth. These sensitivities may be mitigated using the configurability property of the circuits. Finally experimental results are provided to support some of the theoretical claims.     

A 30-MHz mixed analog/digital signal processor

A multiplying encoder architecture that is implemented in the design of a mixed analog and digital signal processor is presented. The processor is suitable for performing both high-speed A/D conversion and digital filtering in a single chip. The device can resolve the input with 8 b at 30 Msample/s and perform 28 multiply and 28 add operations per sample under typical conditions. The processor is designed for a 28-tap programmable FIR (finite impulse response) filter with analog input signal which can be used for waveform shaping of the modem to obtain the desired transmission performance for business satellite communication and mobile communication. The chip is fabricated in a 1-μm double-polysilicon and double-metal CMOS technology. The chip size is 9.73×8.14 mm², and the chip operates with a single +5.0-V power supply. Typical power dissipation is 950 mW; 330 mW is dissipated in analog and 620 mW is in the digital block     

A single-chip CMOS analog/digital mixed NTSC decoder

A single-chip CMOS LSI that integrates all analog-to-digital (A/D), digital-to-analog (D/A), peripheral, and digital signal processing circuits necessary for a digital National Television System Committee (NTSC) signal decoder is described. The LSI chip accepts composite NTSC video signals in analog form, digitizes them using the on-chip A/D converter, converts them to component RGB signals, and then converts the signals to analog form by using the on-chip D/A converters. The development of circuits that maximize use of the input digital data is discussed. A 6-b A/D circuit is used to reduce the circuit size. Circuits that help maintain acceptable picture quality despite 6-b resolution were developed. Besides analog NTSC signal input and RGB signal output, the IC can also input and output digital NTSC signals, Y/C (luminance, chrominance) signals, and RGB signals. Applications of the LSI are presented     

Image-motion detection using analog VLSI

Motion detection by differentiating the output currents of photosensors arranged in a 2D array is described. Subnanoampere current differentiation is made possible by the use of a novel current-mirror (CM) differentiator that requires only four MOSFETs. The pixel density of the motion-detecting imager is higher than 40 pixels/mm². Experimental results of the CM differentiator are reported     

A 32-bit VLSI digital signal processor

A general-purpose programmable digital signal processor (DSP) has been implemented in 1.5-/spl mu/m (L/SUB eff/) NMOS technology using full-custom circuit design for high performance. The DSP has a 32-bit instruction set, 32-bit data path, and full-hardware 32-bit floating-point arithmetic. The architecture is described section by section, and an overview of the instruction set is presented. The extensive design verification process applied to the DSP is also described.     

A Gaussian synapse circuit for analog VLSI neural networks

Back-propagation neural networks with Gaussian function synapses have better convergence property over those with linear-multiplying synapses. In digital simulation, more computing time is spent on Gaussian function evaluation. We present a compact analog synapse cell which is not biased in the subthreshold region for fully-parallel operation. This cell can approximate a Gaussian function with accuracy around 98% in the ideal case. Device mismatch induced by fabrication process will cause some degradation to this approximation. The Gaussian synapse cell can also be used in unsupervised learning. Programmability of the proposed Gaussian synapse cell is achieved by changing the stored synapse weight W_ji, the reference current and the sizes of transistors in the differential pair     

High performance analog VLSI computational circuits

Simple linear voltage/current-controlled voltage-to-current (V-T) converters, which are to first-order insensitive to the threshold voltage variation, are introduced. The circuits can be used as basic building blocks to construct simple analog computational circuits, which can perform functions such as square rooting, squaring, multiplication, sum of squares, difference of squares, etc. Some of the key features are: good linearity, floating inputs [high common-mode rejection ratio (CMRR)], simplicity, and good transconductance tuning range. The circuits can be realized with CMOS devices in saturation, however, BiCMOS devices extend their speed and input voltage range. Realistic simulations and experimental results clearly demonstrate the claims     

VLSI for digital television

The paper provides an overview of the current status in the industry of digitized television including techniques used and their limitations, technological concerns and design methodologies needed to achieve the goals for highly integrated systems. A multiresolution scalable generic HDTV codec based on subband coding is presented, proving the feasibility of VLSI for true HDTV frequency. In addition, a VLSI design methodology is proposed based on programmable processor macrofunctions optimized for the huge amount of data to be processed. The goal was to integrate general VLSI implementation aspects in a specific digital codec system to validate the design methodology for high speed multimedia applications. Digital TV functions can be optimized for encoding and decoding in the same conceptual process and be implemented in silicon in a mole dedicated way using a kind of automated custom design approach allowing enough flexibility     

Semistate theory and analog VLSI design

Semistate theory as applied to electronic circuits is reviewed in a tutorial fashion. The resulting theory is applied to the design of linear VLSI circuits using an admittance framework for which the main components are MOS capacitors, differential pairs and current mirrors. The results are extended to nonlinear designs through the use of CMOS multipliers.     

数字VLSI电路测试技术-BIST方案

分析了数字VLSI电路的传统测试手段及其存在问题,通过对比的方法,讨论了内建自测试(BIST)技术及其优点,简介了多芯片组件(MCM)内建自测试的目标、设计和测试方案。     

Probability propagation and decoding in analog VLSI

The sum-product algorithm (belief/probability propagation) can be naturally mapped into analog transistor circuits. These circuits enable the construction of analog-VLSI decoders for turbo codes, low-density parity-check codes, and similar codes     

New technology towards GaAs LSI/VLSI for computer applications

For future large-scale computer applications, new device technologies towards GaAs LSI/VLSI have been developed: self-aligned fully implanted planar GaAs MESFET technology and high electron mobility transistor (HEMT) technology by molecular beam epitaxy (MBE). The self-aligned GaAs MESFET logic with 1.5-µm gate length exhibits a minimum switching time of 50 ps and the lowest power-delay product of 14.5 fJ at room temperature. The enhancement/depletion (E/D) type direct coupled HEMT logic has achieved a switching time of 17.1 ps with 1.7-µm gate length at liquid nitrogen temperature and more recently a switching time of 12.8 ps with 1.1-µm gate HEMT logic, which exceeds the top speed of Josephson Junction logic and shows the highest speed of any device logic ever reported. Optimized system performances are also projected to system delay of 200 ps at 10-kilogate integration with GaAs MESFET VLSI, and 100 ps at 100-kilogate with HEMT VLSI. These values of system delay correspond to the computer performance of over 100 million instructions per second (MIPS).