Design and verification of a high performance analog switch circuit

A double-pole double-throw analog switch circuit structure with low power consumption, low on-resistance and capable of transmitting negative signals is designed in this paper, which has been developed in 0.18 μm BCD technology. The analog switch circuit is providing about 5 V high swing signal transmission for 2.7–5 V supply voltage in the temperature range of ??40 to 85 °C. The shortcomings of traditional analog switch structure are large on-resistance, large power consumption, etc. In this paper, the charge pump structure of the gate voltage bootstrap switch is designed to overcome the backgate effect, to control the turn-on and turn-off of each switching MOS transistor. A dynamic comparator structure is used to enhance the signal transmission capability, so that the analog switch can transmit negative signal. The measurement results show that under the voltage of 2.7–5 V, the overall designed circuit consumes 92 μW. The on-resistance of the analog switch is 3.9 Ω, and the leakage current is 12 nA. The analog switch has a good signal transmission and shutdown capabilities while occupying an area of 0.67 mm².

     

A 2.4 GHz low power wireless transceiver analog front-end for endoscopy capsule system

This work presents the design and implementation of a 2.4 GHz low power wireless transceiver analog front-end for the endoscopy capsule system in 0.25 μm CMOS. The prototype integrates a low-IF receiver analog front-end (low noise amplifier, double-balanced down-converter, band-pass-filtered AGC loop, and ASK demodulator) and a direct-conversion transmitter analog front-end (20 MHz IF PLL with well-defined amplitude control circuit, ASK modulator, up-converter, and output buffer) on a single chip together with one integrated RF oscillator and two LO buffers. Trade-off has been made over the design boundaries of the different building blocks to optimize the overall system performance. All building blocks feature the circuit topologies that enable comfortable operation at low power consumption. As a result, the IC works at a 2.5 V power supply, while only consuming 15 mW in receiver (RX) mode and 14 mW in transmitter (TX) mode. To build a complete transceiver for the endoscopy capsule system, only an antenna, a duplexer, and a digital controller are needed besides the presented analog front-end chip.     

Design of a CMOS low-power and low-voltage four-quadrant analog multiplier

A New CMOS four-quadrant analog multiplier is presented in this paper. The proposed multiplier is suitable for low supply-voltage operation and its power consumption is also very low. The proposed circuit has been simulated with the HSPICE and simulation results are given to confirm the feasibility of the proposed analog multiplier. According to the simulation results, under the supply voltage of 1.5 V, the input range of the proposed multiplier can be 120 mV and the corresponding maximum linearity error is less than 3.2%. Moreover, the power dissipation of the proposed circuit is only 6.7 μW. The proposed circuit is expected to be useful in analog signal processing applications.     

A SiGe BiCMOS analog SISO decoder with I/O interface

Although recent implementations of analog iterative decoders have proven their potential for higher decoding speed and less power consumption than their digital counterparts, the CMOS or conventional BiCMOS technologies used so far seem to be incapable to cope with the need for high throughput that high-speed applications require. Within this context this work presents the design and test results of a high-speed analog SISO (Soft-Input Soft-Output) channel decoder for an 8-bit trellis code by exploiting the high-speed features of SiGe heterojunction bipolar transistors (HBTs). It is one of the first successful implementations of an error-correcting decoder in SiGe BiCMOS technology, which incorporates a high-speed I/O interface. A high-level model of the mismatch effects indicates that there is no significant performance penalty. Moreover, simulations and performance evaluations of an analog Turbo decoder based on the designed SISO decoder are provided. Even though the IC of the SISO module was tested at a throughput up to 3 Mbps, simulation results show that the decoder is capable to operate at 50 Mbps. The measured power consumption is 860 mW and the die area is 3.4 × 3 mm².     

A CMOS field-programmable analog array

The design details and test results of a field-programmable analog array (FPAA) prototype chip in 1.2-μm CMOS are presented. The analog array is based on subthreshold circuit techniques and consists of a collection of a homogeneous configurable analog blocks (CABs) and an interconnection network. Interconnections between CABs and the analog functions to be implemented in each block are defined by a set of configuration bits loaded serially into an onboard shift register by the user. Macromodels are developed for the analog functions in order to simulate various neural network applications on the field-programmable analog array     

Ultra low-voltage analog circuits for UHF RFID devices in 180 nm CMOS technology

Radio-frequency identification by means of passive tags requires low-cost devices featuring extremely low power consumption for long reading distance and compatibility to small printed antennas. The paper describes the design and implementation of the key analog blocks in a RFID chip: power supply regulator, local oscillator and ASK demodulator. The proposed local oscillator exhibits a very low power consumption and achieves a frequency tolerance compatible with the requirements dictated by the ISO 18000-6 standards. In addition, an ultra-low power voltage reference and a regulator based on a zero-voltage threshold device are presented. These circuits are suitable to provide a regulated power supply to the local oscillator and to the core logic of the passive device. Measurements on a chip implemented in 0.18 μm digital CMOS technology validate the results obtained from simulations.     

An analog feed-forward neural network with on-chip learning

An analog continuous-time neural network with on-chip learning is presented. The 4-3-2 feed-forward network with a modified back-propagation learning scheme was build using micropower building blocks in a double poly, double metal 2 CMOS process. The weights are stored in non-volatile UV-light programmable analog floating gate memories. A differential signal representation is used to design simple building blocks which may be utilized to build very large neural networks. Measured results from on-chip learning are shown and an example of generalization is demonstrated. The use of micro-power building blocks allows very large networks to be implemented without significant power consumption.     

A low-noise high-precision analog front end system for biopotential signals recording application

A high precision and low noise analog front end system is proposed in this paper for recording biopotential signals. The system consists of a capacitor-coupled chopper instrument amplifier (CCIA) and a continue-time (CT) Δ? analog to digital converter (ADC). In order to avoid off-chip low-noise reference, a chopper bias circuit is employed to provide low noise bias for CCIA. A positive feedback loop improves the input impedance of CCIA, and a ripple reduction loop based active integrator eliminates the ripple caused by chopping. A new switch-capacitor integrator is employed in the DC servo loop (DSL) to suppress electrode DC offset and save the integrator capacitor area. The CTΔ? modulator employs an energy-efficient 2nd-order structure consisting of a cascade of integrators with feedforward topology, which is unconditionally stable. The CCIA in the proposed analog front end system achieves an input-referred noise of 1.36 μV_rms (0.5?100 Hz), and the CTΔ? ADC achieves a signal noise distortion ratio (SNDR) of 96.2 dB, which are state of the art. The analog front end system is simulated using the standard 0.18 µm CMOS process, and the total power consumption with a 1.8 V supply is less than 112.5 µW.

     

Mixed-grained CMOS field programmable analog array for smart sensory applications

The drive towards shorter design cycles for analog integrated circuits has given impetus to the development of Field Programmable Analog Arrays （FPAAs）, which are the analogue counterparts of Field Programmable Gate Arrays （FPGAs）. In this paper, we present a new design methodology which using FPAA as a powerful analog front-end processing platform in the smart sensory micro- system. The proposed FPAA contains 16 homogeneous mixed-grained Configurable Analog Blocks （CABs） which house a variety of processing elements especially the proposed fine-grained Core Con- figurable Amplifiers （CCAs）. The high flexible CABs allow the FPAA operating in both continu- ous-time and discrete-time approaches suitable to support variety of sensors. To reduce the nonideal parasitic effects and save area, the fat-tree interconnection network is adopted in this FPAA. The functionality of this FPAA is demonstrated through embedding of voltage and capacitive sensor signal readout circuits and a configurable band pass filter. The minimal detectable voltage and capacitor achieves 38 uV and 8.3 aF respectively within 100 Hz sensor bandwidth. The power consumption comparison of CCA in three applications shows that the FPAA has high power efficiency. And the simulation results also show that the FPAA has good tolerance with wide PVT variations.     

A single-chip NMOS analog front-end LSI for modems

Presents a fully integrated analog front-end LSI chip which is an interface system between digital signal processors and existing analog telecommunication networks. The developed analog LSI chip includes many high level function blocks such as A/D and D/A converters with 11 bit resolution, various kinds of SCFs, an AGC circuit, an external control level adjuster, a carrier detector, and a zero crossing detector. Design techniques employed are mainly directed toward circuit size reductions. The LSI chip is fabricated in a 5 /spl mu/m line double polysilicon gate NMOS process. Chip size is 7.14/spl times/6.51 mm. The circuit operates on /spl plusmn/5 V power supplies. Typical power consumption is 270 mW. By using this analog front-end LSI chip and a digital signal processor, modern systems can be successfully constructed in a compact size.     

Ultra-Low Power Truly Random Number Generator for RFID Tag

This paper proposes low power, low voltage Truly Random Number Generators (TRNG) for Electrical Product Code (EPC Generation 2 Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tag. Design considerations and trade-offs among randomicity, chip area and power consumption are analyzed according to the special requirements of Gen2 RFID tag. The proposed TRNG circuits consist of an analog random seed generator which uses the oscillator sampling mechanism, and Linear Feedback Shift Registers for post digital processing. These TRNG are implemented in SMIC 0.18 μm CMOS process. And their randomicity performances are verified by the FIPS 140-2 standard for security. One of the TRNG circuits outputs a random bit series at a speed of 40 kHz. Its power consumption is 1.04 μW and chip area is 0.05 mm². The other one has a bit rate at 48 kHz. It has a power consumption of 2.6 μW and chip area of 0.018 mm². The features of low power and small chip area in these TRNG circuits provide a good choice to solve the security and privacy problems in RFID systems.     

An analog beam-forming circuit for ultrasound imaging usingswitched-current delay lines

A mixed-signal integrated circuit implements 1120 analog memory points arranged in 16 independent fully programmable delay lines in a 0.8 μm CMOS technology. It demonstrates the feasibility of large scale mixed-mode circuits using the switched current technique. The die area of the chip is 72 mm² and incorporates 16 rather large and complex analog blocks, which take advantage of special design techniques developed in order to keep power consumption at a reasonable level and to eliminate second-order effects due to long power and signal lines. At the nominal 64 MHz sampling rate, harmonic distortion is -48 dB, dynamic range is above 60 dB, and power consumption is 1.22 W from a single 5 V supply     

A fully integrated analog front-end circuit for 13.56 MHz passive RFID tags in conformance with ISO/IEC 18000-3 protocol

A fully integrated analog front-end circuit for 13.56 MHz passive RFID tags is presented in this paper. The design of the RF analog front-end and digital control is based on ISO/IEC 18000-3 MODE 1 protocol. This paper mainly focuses on RF analog front-end circuits. In order to supply voltage for the whole tag chip, a high efficiency power management circuit with a rather wide input range is proposed by utilizing 15.5 V high voltage MOS transistors. Furthermore, a high sensitivity, low power consumption 10% ASK demodulator with a subthreshold-mode hysteresis comparator is introduced for reader-to-tag communication. The tag chip is fabricated in 0.18-μm 2-poly 5-metal mixed signal CMOS technology with EEPROM process. An on-chip 1 kb EEPROM is used to support tag identification, data writing and reading. The core size of the analog front-end is only 0.94×0.84 mm² with a power consumption of 0.42 mW. Measured results show that the power management circuit is able to maintain a proper working condition with an input antenna voltage range of 5.82–12.3 V; the maximum voltage conversion ratio of the rectifier reaches 65.92% when the tag antenna voltage is 9.42 V. Moreover, the power consumption of the 10% ASK demodulator is only 690.25 nW.     

Design and application of precise analog computational circuits

New versatile building blocks for implementing analog functional circuits such as a multiplier, a squarer, and a square rooter based on functional terms of a differential input circuit are proposed and implemented in 0.25 um CMOS process. The input range of these circuits is over  ±1.0 V with a high linearity of less than 4% for 3.3 V power supply. The  ?3 dB bandwidth of all discussed circuits has been measured to over 200 MHz. The functional circuit size is 340 μm², and its typical power consumption is about 90 uW.     

Field programmable analog arrays for implementation of generalized nth‐order operational transconductance amplifier‐C elliptic filters

This study presents a new architecture for a field programmable analog array (FPAA) for use in low‐frequency applications, and a generalized circuit realization method for the implementation of nth‐order elliptic filters. The proposed designs of both the FPAA and elliptic filters are based on the operational transconductance amplifier (OTA) used in implementing OTA‐C filters for biopotential signal processing. The proposed FPAA architecture has a flexible, expandable structure with direct connections between configurable analog blocks (CABs) that eliminates the use of switches. The generalized elliptic filter circuit realization provides a simplified, direct synthetic method for an OTA‐C symmetric balanced structure for even/odd‐nth‐order low‐pass filters (LPFs) and notch filters with minimum number of components, using grounded capacitors. The filters are mapped on the FPAA, and both architectures are validated with simulations in LTspice using 90‐nm complementary metal‐oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technology. Both proposed FPAA and filters generalized synthetic method achieve simple, flexible, low‐power designs for implementation of biopotential signal processing systems.     

CMOS current-controlled current differencing transconductance amplifier and applications to analog signal processing

This article presents design of a basic current-mode building block for analog signal processing, named as current-controlled current differencing transconductance amplifier (CCCDTA). Its parasitic resistances at two current input ports can be controlled by an input bias current. Owing to working in current-mode of all terminals, it is very suitable to use in a current-mode signal processing, which is continually more popular than a voltage one. The proposed element is realized in a CMOS technology and is examined the performance through PSPICE simulations. They display usability of the new active element, where the maximum bandwidth is 311 MHz. The CMOS CCCDTA performs low power consumption and tuning over a wide current range. In addition, some examples as a current-mode universal biquad filter, floating inductance simulator and quadrature oscillator are included. They occupy only single CCCDTA.     

CMOS integrated MPP tracker with analog power measurement at the PV converter input

An integrated converter controller with maximum power point (MPP) regulation in 0.35 μm CMOS for photovoltaic (PV) applications is reported. The implemented MPP tracker bases on a perturb and observe algorithm and acquires the information concerning the power flow via an analog processing circuit which is connected at the switched mode converter input respectively the output of the attached PV string of nine cells. There the solar cell current is measured via a very low-ohmic shunt resistor of 1 mΩ and analogously multiplied with the cell voltage. As output the fabricated test chip directly generates a 530 kHz PWM signal for the external switched mode converter. Measurements show that under similar conditions analog MPP tracking of the converter input power improves the robustness with respect to settling times of the power path compared to those topologies at which the power is measured at the converter output. Between 0.4 and 7.5 A photocurrent the chip achieves tracking efficiencies better than 99.5 % while the power consumption is only 750 μW and a very low chip area demand of 0.043 mm² for the MPP tracking core is achieved.     

A low-power analog motion estimation processor for digital video coding

Analog circuit techniques can be beneficially applied to reduce the circuit complexity and power consumption of motion estimation processors for digital video encoding. However, analog circuits are sensitive to mismatch which affects motion estimation. This paper presents the design of an analog motion estimation processor which overcomes these limitations. A novel architecture is described featuring pixel reuse and input offset error cancellation. The proof-of-concept realization was fabricated in 0.8-/spl mu/m CMOS, and operates on 4/spl times/4 pixel blocks and a search area of 8/spl times/8 pixels. However, the architecture is scalable to larger block sizes and more advanced technologies. Measured results for various QCIF video sequences at 15-f/s showed excellent PSNR performance. The prototype dissipates 0.9 mW of power from a single 3-V power supply and occupies an area of 0.95 mm/sup 2/. Energy consumption is 1.51 nJ per motion vector.     

A fast configurable AGC for front-end of digital hearing aids

This paper presents a fast configurable automatic gain control (AGC) with strong focus on fast acting control and low power consumption. This AGC includes two paths, main amplification path and gain adjusting path. Using the gain adjusting path through an extra amplifier provides a way for tracking and comparing the input signal with four adjusted thresholds to be judged for selecting the appropriate gain value for main amplification path. This mechanism of gain control is done by reorganization of input level and changing the resistance of feedback in main amplification path to generate smooth variation gain, without any interruption or delay in signal flow through the variable gain amplifier. Moreover, in order to protect the user from intense transients in variations of the input signal level, output level of variable gain amplifier is directly monitored using optimum threshold to reduce the overall gain using feedback control mechanism. The minimum power is consumed by gain adjusting path has almost no considerable on power consumption, it greatly improves hearing quality. Meanwhile, using a large size PMOS differential pair at the input improved the noise performance. Proposed AGC designed and simulated in TSMC 130-nm CMOS process. The post layout simulation results the maximal SNR is 84.6 dB in 100 Hz–19.6 kHz band-width and the total consumption power of this AGC is 78 μW at 1 V supply voltage. In addition, its gain is varied smoothly between 20 to 57 dB. Achieved results demonstrate that designed AGC meet the requirement of analog front end of hearing aids.

     

Bulk-driven floating-gate and bulk-driven quasi-floating-gate techniques for low-voltage low-power analog circuits design

In this paper, novel non-conventional techniques,¹ named by the author of this paper “bulk-driven floating-gate (BD-FG)” MOS transistor (MOST) and “bulk-driven quasi-floating-gate (BD-QFG) MOST” for low-voltage (LV) low-power (LP) analog circuit design are presented. These novel techniques appear as a good solution to merge the advantages of floating-gate (FG) and quasi-floating-gate (QFG) with the advantages of bulk-driven (BD) technique and suppress their disadvantages. Consequently, the transconductance and transient frequency of BD-FG and BD-QFG MOSTs approach the conventional gate driven (GD) MOST values. Furthermore, a novel LV LP class AB second generation current conveyor based on BD-FG MOST is presented in this paper as an example. The supply voltage is only ±0.4 V with a rail-to-rail voltage swing capability and total power consumption of mere 10 μW. PSpice simulation results using the 0.18 μm P-well CMOS technology are included to confirm the attractive properties of these new techniques.