A 60-GHz CMOS receiver front-end

The unlicensed band around 60 GHz can be utilized for wireless communications at data rates of several gigabits per second. This paper describes a receiver front-end that incorporates a folded microstrip geometry to create resonance at 60 GHz in a common-gate LNA and active mixers. Realized in 0.13-/spl mu/m CMOS technology, the receiver front-end provides a voltage gain of 28 dB with a noise figure of 12.5 dB while consuming 9 mW from a 1.2-V supply.     

High-voltage devices for 0.5-μm standard CMOS technology

The feasibility of the smart voltage extension (SVX) technique featuring complementary high-voltage devices without any modifications of the process steps of an 0.5-μm standard CMOS technology is discussed here. This letter focuses on the optimization of the breakdown voltage of the HVNMOS as well as the possible implementation of the HVPMOS. Different high-voltage options with increasing process modification steps are discussed as a function of the required high-voltage capabilities     

GSM transceiver front-end circuits in 0.25-μm CMOS

So far, CMOS has been shown to be capable of operating at radio-frequency (RF) frequencies, although the inadequacies of the device-level performance often have to be circumvented by innovations at the architectural level that tend to shift the burden to the circuit building blocks at lower frequencies, The RF front-end circuits presented in this paper show that excellent RF performance is feasible with 0.25-μm CMOS, even in terms of the requirements of the tried-and-true superheterodyne architecture. Design for low-noise and low-current consumption targeted for GSM handsets has been given particular attention in this paper. Low-noise amplifiers with sub-2-dB noise figures (NFs) and a double balanced mixer with 12.6 dB single-sideband NF, as well as sub-25-mA current consumption for the RF front end (complete receiver), are among the main achievements     

A 2.4-GHz low-IF receiver for wideband WLAN in 6-μmCMOS-architecture and front-end

This paper presents the 2.4-GHz front-end and the first downconversion section of a fully integrated low-IF receiver. The dual-conversion receiver rejects the image repeatably by 60 dB using integrated polyphase filters without calibration or tuning. The gain of the RF mixer and IF amplifier is switchable to slide the available dynamic range of the following stages based on the conditions of the input signal. The front-end and downconversion sections drain 35 mA on average from a 3.3-V supply. Minimum cascade noise figure is 7.2 dB, and maximum cascade IIP3 is -3.4 dBm     

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/.     

Current-mode design techniques in low-voltage 24-GHz RF CMOS receiver front-end

A new high frequency CMOS current-mode receiver front-end composed of a current-mode low noise amplifier (LNA) and a current-mode down-conversion mixer has been proposed in the frequency band of 24 GHz and fabricated in 0.13-μm 1P8M CMOS technology. The measurement of the current-mode receiver front-end exhibits a conversion gain of 11.3 dB, a noise figure (NF) of 14.2 dB, the input-referred 1-dB compression point (P_-1 dB)(P_{{-1}\,{\rm dB}}) of −13.5 dBm and the input-referred third-order intercept point (P _IIP3) of −1 dBm. The receiver dissipates 27.8 mW where the supply of LNA is 0.8 V and the supply of mixer is 1.2 V. The power consumption of output buffer is not included. The receiver front-end occupies the active area of 1.45 ×0.721.45 \times 0.72 mm² including testing pads. The measured results show that the proposed current-mode approach can be applied to a high-frequency receiver front-end and is capable of low-voltage applications in the advanced CMOS technologies.     

A 5-GHz CMOS double-quadrature receiver front-end with single-stage quadrature generator

A 5-GHz CMOS double-quadrature front-end receiver for wireless LAN application is proposed. In the receiver, a one-stage RLC phase shifter is used to generate quadrature RF signals. Implemented in 0.18 /spl mu/m CMOS technology, the receiver chip can achieve 50.6-dB image rejection with power dissipation of 22.4 mW at 1.8-V voltage supply.     

A 5.3-GHz programmable divider for HiPerLAN in 0.25-μm CMOS

A 5.3-GHz low-voltage CMOS frequency divider whose modulus can be varied from 220 to 224 is presented. Programmability is achieved by switching between different output phases of a D-flip-flop (DFF). An improved glitch-free phase switching architecture through the use of retimed multiplexer control signals is introduced. A high-speed low-voltage DFF circuit is given. The programmable divider fabricated in 0.25-μm technology occupies 0.09 mm²; it consumes 17.4 mA at 1.8 V and 26.8 mA at 2.2 V. Operation of 5.5 GHz with 300-mV_pk single-ended input is achieved with a 2.2-V supply. The residual phase noise at the output is -131 dBc/Hz at an offset of 1 kHz from the carrier while operating from a 5.5 GHz input     

A 2.4-GHz sub-mW CMOS receiver front-end for wireless sensors network

A 2.4-GHz fully integrated CMOS receiver front-end using current-reused folded-cascode circuit scheme is presented. A configuration utilizing vertically stacked low-noise amplifier (LNA) and a folded-cascode mixer is proposed to improve both conversion gain and noise figure suitable for sub-mW receiver circuits. The proposed front-end achieves a conversion gain of 31.5dB and a noise figure of 11.8dB at 10MHz with 500-/spl mu/A bias current from a 1.0-V power supply. The conversion gain and noise figure improvements of the proposed front-end over a conventional merged LNA and single-balanced mixer are 11dB and 7.2dB at 10MHz, respectively, with the same power consumption of 500/spl mu/W.     

High performance 3.3- and 5-V 0.5-μm CMOS technology for ASIC's

Process integration of two manufacturable high performance 0.5-μm CMOS technologies, one optimized for 5.0 V operation and the second optimized for 3.3-V operation, will be presented. The paper will emphasize poly-buffered LOGOS (PBL) isolation, MOS transistor design using conventional and statistical modeling to reduce circuit performance sensitivity to process fluctuations, gate oxide and gate length control, and hot carrier reliability of the transistors. Manufacturing and simulation data for both 3.3- and 5.0-V technologies will be shown. The nominal ring oscillator delay is measured for both 3.3- and 5.0-V technologies as 80 ps. Therefore, 5.0-V technology equivalent speed is achieved in the 3.3-V technology with a reduction in power consumption by a factor of 2.4     

A CMOS mainframe processor with 0.5-μm channel length

A processor chip set with IBM/370 architecture is implemented on five CMOS VLSI chips containing 2.8 million transistors with an effective channel length of 0.5 μm. The chip set consists of the instruction and the fixed-point processor, two cache chips with 16 KB of data and instructions, and the floating-point processor. The chips are implemented in a 1.0-μm technology with three layers of metal. An automatic design system based on the sea-of-gates technique and the standard cell approach was used. The worst-case operating frequency of the chip set is 35 MHz (typically 50 MHz). Four chips of the processor are packaged on a ceramic multichip module. Level-sensitive scan design, built-in self-test, and parity check guarantee high test coverage and reliability     

ESD protection for output pad with well-coupled field-oxide devicein 0.5-μm CMOS technology

A well-coupled field-oxide device (WCFOD) is first proposed to effectively improve Electrostatic Discharge (ESD) robustness of the output pad in a 0.5-μm CMOS process. ESD-transient voltage is coupled to the bulk of field-oxide device through a parasitic capacitor to trigger on the lateral bipolar action of the field-oxide device. This WCFOD has been practically implemented in a 256-K high-speed SRAM product to sustain HBM ESD stress up to 6500 V     

Quaternary logic circuits in 2-μm CMOS technology

Novel quaternary logic circuits, designed in 2-μm CMOS technology, are presented. These include threshold detector circuits with an improved output voltage swing and a simple binary-to-quaternary encoder circuit. Based on these, the literal circuits, the quaternary-to-binary decoder, and the quaternary register are derived. A novel scheme for improving the power-delay product of pseudo-NMOS circuits is developed. Simulations for an inverter indicate a 66% improvement over a conventional pseudo-NMOS circuit. Noise-margin and tolerance estimations are made for the threshold detectors. To demonstrate the utility of these circuits, a quaternary sequential/storage logic array (QSLA), based on the Allen-Givone algebra has been designed and fabricated. The prototype chip occupies an area of 4.84 mm², is timed with a 2.2-MHz clock, and consumes 93 mW of power     

A 900-MHz dual-conversion low-IF GSM receiver in 0.35-μm CMOS

A low-power fully integrated GSM receiver is developed in 0.35-μm CMOS. This receiver uses dual conversion with a low IF of 140 kHz. This arrangement lessens the impact of the flicker noise. The first IF of 190 MHz best tolerates blocking signals. The receiver includes all of the circuits for analog channel selection, image rejection, and more than 100-dB controllable gain. The receiver alone consumes 22 mA from a 2.5-V supply, to give a noise figure of 5 dB, and input IP3 of -16 dBm. A single frequency synthesizer generates both LO frequencies. The integrated VCO with on-chip resonator and buffers consume another 8 mA, and meets GSM phase-noise specifications     

A 24-GHz CMOS front-end

This paper reports the first 24-GHz CMOS front-end in a 0.18-/spl mu/m process. It consists of a low-noise amplifier (LNA) and a mixer and downconverts an RF input at 24 GHz to an IF of 5 GHz. It has a power gain of 27.5 dB and an overall noise figure of 7.7 dB with an input return loss, S/sub 11/ of -21 dB consuming 20 mA from a 1.5-V supply. The LNA achieves a power gain of 15 dB and a noise figure of 6 dB on 16 mA of dc current. The LNA's input stage utilizes a common-gate with resistive feedthrough topology. The performance analysis of this topology predicts the experimental results with good accuracy.     

A fully integrated analog front-end macro for cable modemapplications in 0.18-μm CMOS

An analog front-end (AFE) module designed for use together with a digital cable modem transceiver on one single die is presented. All the analog functionality is implemented in a pure 0.18-μm CMOS process with 1.8-V supply. Besides the critical requirements toward substrate and supply isolation, the design of the high-order antialiasing filter, the high-performance analog-to-digital converter, and the low-jitter phase-locked loop are most challenging. With a silicon area of 9.9 mm ² and a power dissipation of less than 1 W, this 3-channel AFE can be considered a reference design for first-IF sampling (surface acoustic wave (SAW)-less) cable modem systems     

A low-power 8-PAM serial transceiver in 0.5-μm digital CMOS

An 8-PAM CMOS transceiver is described in this paper. Pre-emphasis is implemented without an increase in DAC resolution or digital computation. The receiver oversamples with three fully differential 3-bit ADCs. The prototype transmits at up to 1.3 Gb/s and has a measured bit error rate of less than 1 in 10¹³ for an 810-Mb/s pseudorandom bit sequence transmission. The device, packaged in a 68-pin ceramic leadless chip carrier, is implemented in 0.5-μm digital CMOS, occupies 2 mm², and dissipates 400 mW from a 3.3-V supply     

High-performance devices for a 0.15-μm CMOS technology

Devices have been designed and fabricated in a CMOS technology with a nominal channel length of 0.15 μm and minimum channel length below 0.1 μm. In order to minimize short-channel effects (SCEs) down to channel lengths below 0.1 μm, highly nonuniform channel dopings (obtained by indium and antimony channel implants) and shallow source-drain extensions/halo (by In and Sb preamorphization and low-energy As and BF₂ implant were used. Maximum high V _DS threshold rolloff was 250 mV at effective channel length of 0.06 μm. For the minimum channel length of 0.1 μm, the loaded (FI=FO=3, C=240 fF) and unloaded delays were 150 and 25 ps, respectively     

0.15-μm RF CMOS technology compatible with logic CMOS forlow-voltage operation

Radio Frequency (RF) CMOS is expected to replace bipolar and GaAs MESFETs in RF front-end ICs for mobile telecommunications devices in the near future. In order for the RF CMOS to be popularly used in this application, compatibility of its process for high-speed logic CMOS and low supply voltage operation are important for low fabrication cost and low power consumption. In this paper, a 0.15-μm RF CMOS technology compatible with logic CMOS for low-voltage operation is described. Because the fabrication process is the same as the high-speed logic CMOS, manufacturability of this technology is excellent. Some of the passive elements can be integrated without changing the process and others can be integrated with the addition of a few optional processes. Mixed RF and logic CMOS devices in a one-chip LSI can be realized with relatively low cost. Excellent high-frequency characteristics of small geometry silicon MOSFETs with low-power supply voltage are demonstrated. Cutoff frequency of 42 GHz of n-MOSFETs, which is almost the same level at that of general high-performance silicon bipolar transistors, was obtained. N-MOSFET's maintained enough high cutoff frequency of 32 GHz even at extremely low supply voltage of 0.5 V. Moreover, it was confirmed that degradation of minimum noise figure for deep submicron MOSFETs with 0.5 V operation is sufficiently small compared with 2.0 V operation. These excellent high-frequency characteristics of small geometry silicon MOSFETs under low-voltage operation are suitable for mobile telecommunications applications