A high-efficiency CMOS +22-dBm linear power amplifier

Modern wireless communication systems require power amplifiers with high efficiency and high linearity. CMOS is the technology of choice for complete systems on a chip due to its lower costs and high integration levels. However, it has always been difficult to integrate high-efficiency power amplifiers in CMOS. In this paper, we present a new class of operation (parallel A&B) for power amplifiers that improves both their dynamic range and power efficiency. A prototype design of the new amplifier was fabricated in a 0.18-/spl mu/m CMOS technology. Measurement results show a PAE that is over 44% and the measured output power is +22 dBm. In comparison to a normal class A amplifier, this new design increases the 1-dB compression point (P1dB) by over 3 dB and reduces dc power consumption by over 50% within the linear operating range.     

A new noncoherent UWB impulse radio receiver

This letter analyzes the implementation issues related to coherent receivers for UWB impulse radio with a special emphasis on timing and jitter problems. We propose a new jitter tolerant receiver design that is easy to implement. Analytical BER analysis and simulations verify that the performance of the proposed receiver is comparable to that of a correlator-based receiver that includes jitter. The new design is a promising candidate for low-cost low-power UWB IR receiver implementations.     

Partial positive feedback for gain enhancement of low-power CMOS otas

Four circuit schemes that use partial positive feedback for gain enhancement in CMOS OTAs are examined. These circuit schemes are classified as type I and type II circuits. Type I circuits use a differential input pair with positive feedback and type II circuits use a active load with positive feedback. As the primary emphasis of these circuits is for micropower operation, the circuits have been examined in detail in the subthreshold region. A comparison of the primary characteristics of these circuits together with simulation results are presented. It is shown that partial positive feedback is a viable technique to increase the gain and the bandwidth of CMOS OTAs. Without any increase in power, a 20 dB increase in gain and a 5X improvement in bandwidth is feasible.     

CMOS switched-op-amp-based sample-and-hold circuit

This paper presents a sample-and-hold design that is based on a switched-op-amp topology. Charge injection errors are greatly reduced by turning off transistors in the saturation region instead of the triode region as is the case for traditional MOS switches. The remaining clock feed through error is mostly signal-independent and is cancelled out by a pseudodifferential topology. Switched-opamps are designed and fabricated in a 2-μ CMOS technology. The measurement results show that the harmonics are at least 78 dB below the signal level. Both the measurement results from fabricated ICs and simulation results suggest the potential benefits of this approach in comparison to traditional switched-capacitor circuits     

A High-Efficiency DC–DC Converter Using 2 nH Integrated Inductors

Historically, buck converters have relied on high-Q inductors on the order of 1 to 100 muH to achieve a high efficiency. Unfortunately, on-chip inductors are physically large and have poor series resistances, which result in low-efficiency converters. To mitigate this problem, on-chip magnetic coupling is exploited in the proposed stacked interleaved topology to enable the use of small (2 nH) on-chip inductors in a high-efficiency buck converter. The dramatic decrease in the inductance value is made possible by the unique bridge timing of the stacked design that causes magnetic coupling to boost the converter's efficiency by reducing the current ripple in each inductor. The magnetic coupling is realized by stacking the two inductors on top of one another, which not only lowers the required inductance, but also reduces the chip area consumed by the two inductors. The measured conversion efficiency for the prototype circuit, implemented in a 130-nm CMOS technology, shows more than a 15% efficiency improvement over a linear converter for low output voltages rising to a peak efficiency of 77.9 % for a 0.9 V output. These efficiencies are comparable to converters implemented with higher Q inductors, validating that the proposed techniques enable high-efficiency converters to be realized with small on-chip inductors.     

System-level design for test of fully differential analog circuits

Several designs for test techniques for fully differential circuits have recently been proposed. These techniques are based on the inherent data encoding, the fully differential analog code (FDAC), present in differential circuits. These techniques have not previously been verified experimentally. In this paper, we report results from a fabricated test chip which incorporates design for test structures. The test chip is a fully differential fifth-order filter, and was fabricated on a 2-μm CMOS process. The test techniques implemented are derived from a system-level technique developed earlier. The test chip contains fault injection circuitry to emulate faults. Our results demonstrate that the FDAC is a viable design for test technique for analog circuits     

A 3$,times,$5-Gb/s Multilane Low-Power 0.18-$mu{hbox {m}}$ CMOS Pseudorandom Bit Sequence Generator

A low-power, three-lane, pseudorandom bit sequence (PRBS) generator has been fabricated in a 0.18-mum CMOS process to test a multilane multi-Gb/s transmitter that cancels far-end crosstalk. Although the proposed PRBS generator was designed to produce three uncorrelated 12-Gb/s PRBS sequences, measurement results included in this paper have been obtained at only 5 Gb/s due to test setup limitations. The prototype employs a CMOS latch optimized to operate at frequencies close to the of the process and a current-mode logic (CML) MUX with modified active inductor loads for better high-speed large-signal behavior. In order to reduce the power consumption, a quarter-clock rate linear feedback shift register (LFSR) core in a power-efficient parallel architecture has been implemented to minimize the use of power-hungry, high-speed circuitry. Further power reduction has been achieved through the clever partitioning of the system into static logic and CML. In addition, the prototype design produces three uncorrelated 12-Gb/s data streams from a single quarter-rate LFSR core, thereby amortizing the power across multiple channels which lowers the power per channel by 3 times. The total measured power consumption at 5 Gb/s is 131 mW per lane and the calculated figure of merit per lane is 0.84 pJ/bit, which is significantly better than previously published designs.