A 1-V 5-bit 0.5 GS/s time-based flash ADC in 0.18 µm CMOS technology

A novel low-voltage rail-to-rail parallel time-based analog-to-digital converter (ADC) is proposed. The proposed ADC works like a conventional flash ADC except that the process is performed in the time-domain. Since the operation of analog integrated circuits at low supply voltages is limited, converting the voltage signals to the time domain improves the efficiency of the circuit. In this paper, a constant-delay ladder is utilized to make the reference delay-times to compare with the input signal. A 1-V 5-bit 500 MS/s ADC has been designed and simulated in 0.18 µm CMOS technology consumed 3.66 mW. The simulation results show 0.3lsb and 0.2lsb for INL and DNL respectively. Signal-to-noise and distortion ratio (SNDR) of the proposed ADC is 26.7 dB at Nyquist frequency. The rail-to-rail operation and linearity of the voltage-to-time converter (VTC) improved the efficiency of the ADC comparing to the similar time-based ADCs. The figure-of-merit (FoM) of the ADC is about 0.31 (pJ/conv.step).

     

A low phase noise and low power 3–5 GHz frequency synthesizer in 0.18 µm CMOS technology

A low power frequency synthesizer for WLAN applications is proposed in this paper. The NMOS transistor-feedback voltage controlled oscillator (VCO) is designed for the purpose of decreasing phase noise. TSPC frequency divider is designed for widening the frequency range with keeping low the power consumption. The phase frequency detector (PFD) with XOR delay cell is designed to have the low blind and dead zone, also for neutralizing the charge pump (CP) output currents; the high gain operational amplifier and miller capacitors are applied to the circuit. The frequency synthesizer is simulated in 0.18 µm CMOS technology while it works at 1.8 V supply voltage. The VCO has a phase noise of −136 dBc/Hz at 1 MHz offset. It has 10.2% tuning range. With existence of a frequency divider in the frequency synthesizer loop the output frequency of the VCO can be divided into the maximum ratio of 18. It is considered that the power consumption of the frequency synthesizer is 4 mW and the chip area is 10,400 µm².     

Sub 0.5-V bulk-driven LTA in 0.18 μm CMOS

The paper deals with a new solution for an ultra-low-voltage loser take all (LTA) circuit, capable to operate from supply voltages ranging from 0.3 to 0.5 V. The proposed circuit exploit the idea of multiple voltage buffers with a common output. In order to obtain a compact and precise LTA, a new kind of an ultra-low-voltage buffer has been developed. Owing to the fact that for such a low supply voltage the available voltage swing is highly reduced, the impact of transistor mismatches and speed-accuracy-power tradeoffs have extensively been discussed in the paper. While implemented in a standard 0.18 μm CMOS process, the proposed LTA circuit in a two-input version consumes 3.0 μW from a 0.5 V supply and provides 10 μs crossover recovery time for a 1 pF load capacitance.     

A 1 V, 0.53 ns, 59 μW Current Comparator Using Standard 0.18 μm CMOS Technology

Wireless Personal Communications - This letter aim to propose a current comparator based on simple current mirror which use single amplifier to reduce input offset, the improving symmetry current...     

High performance MEMS 0.18 μm RF-CMOS transformers

This work presents the application of a front-side maskless MEMS process to improve the performance of RF-CMOS transformers. High-frequency parasitic effects are much diminished, as oxide and substrate material are etched away. The passivated metal surface prevents damage to the transformer, and to other circuits, which use metal layers as self-aligned etch masks. Device self-resonant frequency was improved by 20%. At 18 GHz, device quality factor rose from 0.5 to 6, and at 50 GHz, maximum available gain was increased by 49%. The process's low cost relative to other MEMS optimization methods with similar results makes this process attractive for the use of transformers in system-on-chip design.     

A 0.18μm CMOS fluorescent detector system for bio-sensing application

A CMOS fluorescent detector system for biological experiment is presented. This system integrates a CMOS compatible photodiode, a capacitive trans-impedance amplifier （CTIA）, and a 12 bit pipelined analog-to- digital converter （ADC）, and is implemented in a 0.18μm standard CMOS process. Some special techniques, such as a ＂contact imaging＂ detecting method, pseudo-differential architecture, dummy photodiodes, and a T-type reset switch, are adopted to achieve low-level sensing application. Experiment results show that the Nwell/Psub photodiode with CTIA pixel achieves a sensitivity of 0.1 A/W at 515 nm and a dark current of 300 fA with 300 mV reverse biased voltage. The maximum differential and integral nonlinearity of the designed ADC are 0.8 LSB and 3 LSB, respectively. With an integrating time of 50 ms, this system is sensitive to the fluorescence emitted by the fluorescein solution with concentration as low as 20 ng/mL and can generate 7 fA photocurrent. This chip occupies 3 mm^2 and consumes 37 mW.     

A 0.18μm CMOS inductorless complementary-noise-canceling-LNA for TV tuner applications

This paper presents an inductorless complementary-noise-canceling LNA(CNCLNA) for TV tuners.The CNCLNA exploits single-to-differential topology,which consists of a common gate stage and a common source stage. The complementary topology can save power and improve the noise figure.Linearity is also enhanced by employing a multiple gated transistors technique.The chip is implemented in SMIC 0.18μm CMOS technology.Measurement shows that the proposed CNCLNA achieves 13.5-16 dB voltage gain from 50 to 860 MHz,...     

A 0.18 μm CMOS fluorescent detector system for bio-sensing application

A CMOS fluorescent detector system for biological experiment is presented. This system integrates a CMOS compatible photodiode, a capacitive trans-impedance amplifier (CTIA), and a 12 bit pipelined analog-to-digital converter (ADC), and is implemented in a 0.18 μm standard CMOS process. Some special techniques, such as a "contact imaging" detecting method, pseudo-differential architecture, dummy photodiodes, and a T-type reset switch, are adopted to achieve low-level sensing application. Experiment results show that the Nwell/Psub photodi-ode with CTIA pixel achieves a sensitivity of 0.1 A/W at 515 nm and a dark current of 300 fA with 300 mV reverse biased voltage. The maximum differential and integral nonlinearity of the designed ADC are 0.8 LSB and 3 LSB, respectively. With an integrating time of 50 ms, this system is sensitive to the fluorescence emitted by the fluorescein solution with concentration as low as 20 ng/mL and can generate 7 fA photocurrent. This chip occupies 3 mm2 and consumes 37 mW.     

0.18μm CMOS可编程增益放大器

介绍了一种基于0.18μm CMOS工艺,应用于5 GHz无线局域网(WLAN)的可编程增益放大器(PGA)。该PGA采用分级可选放大器的系统结构,核心电路由交叉耦合的共源共栅放大器和电流反馈放大器组成。为消除工艺角偏差对增益精度的影响,设计中加入了增益微调的机制。后仿真结果表明:PGA电压增益可在0 dB到41 dB之间以1 dB步长变化,双端输出的电压摆幅为1 Vp-p,并具有大于10 MHz的-3 dB带宽和小于21.1 mW的静态功耗。     

A 0.18 μm CMOS ring VCO for clock and data recovery applications

In this paper, a 3.125 GHz four stage voltage controlled ring oscillator is presented. The oscillator has been designed in a 0.18 μm CMOS process with a 1.8 V supply. Behavioral simulations predict an 18% tuning range for the oscillator, with −91 dBc/Hz phase noise at 1 MHz offset. Its power consumption has been simulated to be as low as 15.3 mW and the variation of its DC level of oscillation is 20 mV, which corresponds to 1.3% of its mean value. While consuming less area than an LC VCO, the proposed oscillator design achieves a more stable and reliable operation point.     

A 0.18μm CMOS single-inductor single-stage quadrature frontend for GNSS receiver

This paper presents an improved merged architecture for a low-IF GNSS receiver frontend,where the bias current and functions are reused in a stacked quadrature LNA-mixer-VCO.Only a single spiral inductor is implemented for the LC resonator and an extra 1/2 frequency divider is added as the quadrature LO signal generator. The details of the design are presented.The gain plan and noise figure are discussed.The phase noise,quadrature accuracy and power consumption are improved.The test chip is fabricated though a 0.18μm RF CMOS process. The measured noise figure is 5.4 dB on average,with a gain of 43 dB and a IIP3 of-39 dBm.The measured phase noise is better than -105 dBc/Hz at 1 MHz offset.The total power consumption is 19.8 mW with a 1.8 V supply. The experimental results satisfy the requirements for GNSS applications.     

Comparative study of low-frequency noise in 0.18 μm and 0.35 μm gate-length nMOSFETs with gate area of 1.1 μm2

We analyzed the noise characteristics of 0.18 μm and 0.35 μm nMOSFETs with a gate area of 1.1 μm² in the frequency range of 1 Hz to 100 kHz. Both two- and four-finger devices were investigated and analyzed. The experimental results show that the noise of 0.35 μm gate-length nMOSFET possesses lower 1/f component than the 0.18 μm one, whereas the four-finger devices reveal less 1/f noise than those of with two-finger ones. Furthermore, we used time domain measurement of drain current and also the statistical analysis of wafer level on the random telegraph signals (RTS) tests, and the results showed that RTS noise is higher in devices with a 0.35 μm gate-length, and devices with a smaller gate finger width produce more RTS noise than devices with a larger gate finger width.     

0.18 μm CMOS射频低噪声放大器设计

基于TSMC 0.18μm RFCMOS工艺,设计了一种工作于2.4 GHz频段的低噪声放大器。电路采用Cascode结构,为整个电路提供较高的增益,然后进行了阻抗匹配和噪声系数的性能分析,最后利用ADS2009对其进行了模拟优化。最后仿真结果显示。该放大器的正向功率增益为14 d B,噪声系数小于2 d B,1 d B压缩点为-13 d Bm,功耗为7.8 m W,具有良好的综合性能指标。     

0.18μm CMOS, Monolithic MSTP ASIC

I. Introduction Motivated by adopting both telecom and data-com traffic into Synchronous Digital Hierarchy (SDH)[1] transport payloads, we develop the mono-lithic Multi-Service Transport Platform (MSTP)[2] Application Specified Integrated Circuit (ASIC) MSEOSX8-6, which is a highly integrated device capable of mapping 10/100/1000Mbit/s Ethernet[3], 155Mbit/s Resilient Packet Ring (RPR)[4], as well as 2.048Mbit/s E1 traffic into SDH STM-1 payloads. On the line side, the chip s…     

High linearity technique for ultra-wideband low noise amplifier in 0.18 μm CMOS technology

A linearization technique for ultra-wideband low noise amplifier (UWB LNA) has been designed and fabricated in standard 0.18 μm CMOS technology. The proposed technique exploits the complementary characteristics of NMOS and PMOS to improve the linearity performance. A two-stage UWB LNA is optimized to achieve high linearity over the 3.1-10.6 GHz range. The first stage adopts inverter topology with resistive feedback to provide high linearity and wideband input matching, whereas the second stage is a cascode amplifier with series and shunt inductive peaking techniques to extend the bandwidth and achieve high gain simultaneously. The proposed UWB LNA exhibits a measured flat gain of 15 dB within the entire band, a minimum noise figure of 3.5 dB, and an IIP3 of 6.4 dBm while consuming 8 mA from a 1.8 V power supply. The total chip area is 0.39 mm², including all pads. The measured input return loss is kept below −11 dB, and the output return loss is −8 dB, from 3.1 to 10.6 GHz.     

A Two Stage Variable-Gain Low-Noise Amplifier for X-Band in 0.18 µm CMOS

In this paper a variable gain low noise amplifier (VG-LNA) is designed and analyzed for X band in 0.18 µm CMOS technology. A two-stage structure is utilized in the proposed VG-LNA and its gain, which is controlled by an on-chip voltage (V_cnt), has continuous and almost linear variations. The required range for V_cnt can be initiated from 0.5 V, also the variations of gain doesn’t ruin reflection loss (S11), return loss (S12) and noise figure (NF). The best performance of this VG-LNA is at 10 GHz frequency with 1 GHz bandwidth. In the center frequency, the maximum gain is 20.8 dB that continuously and linearly decreases to 4 dB by increasing V_cnt. Also S11 and S12 in this frequency are lower than ?27 and ?38 dB, respectively. NF is lower than 2 dB in the mentioned frequency range and NF_min is equal to 1.2 dB, while the third-order intercept point (IIP3) equals to 8.27 dBm in the best condition and always stays above ?10 dBm. The main advantage of the proposed structure in compare with the similar structures is not only the key parameters don’t ruin by the gain variations, but also increment of V_cnt operation range (0.5 V to V_dd), leads to expanding gain control range. These results are achieved while the power consumption is 8.4 mW with 1.8 V supply voltage and the chip area is 0.56 mm².     

Design and analysis of a UWB low-noise amplifier in the 0.18 μm CMOS process

An ultra-wideband (3.1-10.6 GHz) low-noise amplifier using the 0.18 μm CMOS process is presented. It employs a wideband filter for impedance matching. The current-reused technique is adopted to lower the power consumption. The noise contributions of the second-order and third-order Chebyshev fliers for input matching are analyzed and compared in detail. The measured power gain is 12.4-14.5 dB within the bandwidth. NF ranged from 4.2 to 5.4 dB in 3.1-10.6 GHz. Good input matching is achieved over the entire bandwidth. The test chip consumes 9 mW (without output buffer for measurement) with a 1.8 V power supply and occupies 0.88 mm2.