The impact of scaling down to deep submicron on CMOS RF circuits

Recent papers reporting CMOS RF building blocks have aroused great expectations for RF receivers using deep-submicron technologies. This paper examines the trend in CMOS scaling, in order to establish the required current levels and achievable performance for different feature sizes, if robust, easily manufacturable designs are to be implemented for cellular applications. The boundary conditions (system-level constraints) for such designs, in terms of the number of trimmed and untrimmed external components and the roles they play in relaxing active circuit requirements, are emphasized throughout to make comparison of active RF circuits meaningful. At 1 GHz, 0.25-μm CMOS appears to be the threshold for robust, low-NF RF front ends with current consumption competitive with today's BJT implementations     

Mutually connected phase-locked loop networks: dynamical models and design parameters

Distribution of timing signals is an essential factor for the development of digital systems for telecommunication networks, integrated circuits and manufacturing automation. Originally, this distribution was implemented by using the master?slave architecture with a precise master clock generator sending signals to phaselocked loops (PLL) working as slave oscillators. Nowadays, wireless networks with dynamical connectivity and the increase in size and operation frequency of the integrated circuits suggest that the distribution of clock signals could be more efficient if mutually connected architectures were used. Here, mutually connected PLL networks are studied and conditions for synchronous states existence are analytically derived, depending on individual node parameters and network connectivity, considering that the nodes are nonlinear oscillators with nonlinear coupling conditions. An expression for the network synchronisation frequency is obtained. The lock-in range and the transmission error bounds are analysed providing hints to the design of this kind of clock distribution system.     

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     

Recombinant human erythropoietin (rhEPO) treatment potentiates growth hormone (GH) response to growth hormone releasing hormone (GHRH) stimulation in hemodialysis patients

On the basis of previously described effects of recombinant human erythropoietin (rhEPO) treatment on endocrine abnormalities present in uremia, we assessed the possible effect of treatment with rhEPO on growth hormone (GH) response to growth hormone releasing hormone (GHRH) in a group of uremic patients. Eight patients on maintenance hemodialysis for 12 to 228 months, not previously treated with rhEPO, were tested with 100 micrograms of GHRH i.v. in bolus before and after three months of rhEPO treatment (40 U/kg i.v. three times a week). Before treatment, the GH response to GHRH was characterized, in uremic patients, by remarkable differences in plasma GH values and in the pattern of response curve in single patients. The variability of GH response was not modified after rhEPO treatment; however, an overall potentiation of GH response with a significant increase of plasma GH (p = 0.017 at 15 min, p = 0.035 at 30 min after GHRH injection) was observed in the tests performed after treatment. rhEPO administration induced an evident improvement of anemia, blood hemoglobin concentration being 5.3-7.6 g/dl before and 9.1-11.3 g/dl after treatment; however a demonstrable correlation between the potentiation of GH response to GHRH and the increase of hemoglobin concentration was not observed.     

A 20-mA-receive, 55-mA-transmit, single-chip GSM transceiver in0.25-μm CMOS

This paper presents a low-power 900-MHz GSM transceiver developed in a 0.25-μm CMOS technology. The superhet receiver, with a single intermediate frequency at 71 MHz, has an overall worst case noise figure of 8.1 dB, including all filters. The overall gain can be digitally controlled over 98-dB range. The receiver consumes only 19.5 mA from the 2.5-V voltage supply while achieving the required blocking and intermodulation performance. The direct conversion transmitter has a fully integrated phase shifter and provides a 2-mW signal to the power amplifier with a low level of spurious emissions. The transmitted Gaussian minimum shift keying signal has an RMS average phase error <2°, and the overall current consumption of the transmitter is 55 mA     

Global and partial synchronism in phase-locked loop networks

We analytically investigate the existence of global and partial synchronism in neural networks where each node is represented by a phase oscillator. Partial synchronism, which is important to pattern recognition, can be caused by increasing the natural frequency of an oscillator and restricting the frequencies of others in certain ranges.     

Associations between healthy eating patterns and indicators of metabolic risk in postmenopausal women

Background  

Since human diets contain many components that may work synergistically to prevent or promote disease, assessing diet quality may be informative. The purpose of this study was to investigate the association between quality diet, by using Healthy Eating Index (HEI), and metabolic risk indicators in postmenopausal women.     

Identification of Gurson–Tvergaard material model parameters via Kalman filtering technique. I. Theory

In this paper quasi-static ductile fracture processes are simulated within the framework of the finite element method by means of the Gurson–Tvergaard isotropic constitutive model for progressively cavitating elastoplastic solids. The progressive degradation of the material strength properties in the fracture process zone due to micro-void growth to coalescence is modeled through the computational cell concept. Among the several model parameters to be calibrated in the computations, attention is restricted to the Tvergaard coefficients q ₁ and q ₂ and to the initial porosity f ₀ in the unstressed configuration. To identify these model parameters the inverse problem is solved via the extended Kalman filter for nonlinear systems coupled to a numerical methodology for the sensitivity analysis. In part I of this work the theory of Kalman filtering and sensitivity analysis is presented. First results concerning the identification of the Tvergaard parameters for a whole crack growth in single edge notched bend specimens made of a pressure vessel steel are presented. In order to enhance the convergence towards the final solution of the identification procedure, during the tests measurements are made of the displacements of points located in the central portion of the notched specimens, where model parameters highly affect the system state variables. In part II of this work a numerical validation of the proposed procedure in terms of uniqueness of the final identified solution, requirements of accuracy for the Bayesian initialization of the model parameters and sensitivity to the experimental measurement errors will be presented and discussed.     

Computing with phase locked loops: choosing gains and delays

We simulate a four-node fully connected phase-locked loop (PLL) network with an architecture similar to the neural network proposed by Hoppensteadt and Izhikevich (1999, 2000), using second-order PLLs. The idea is to complement their work analyzing some engineering questions like:how the individual gain of the nodes affects the synchronous state of whole network; how the individual gain of the nodes affects the acquisition time of the whole network; how close the free-running frequencies of the nodes need to be in order to the network be able to acquire the synchronous state; how the delays between nodes affect the synchronous state frequency. The computational results show that the Hoppensteadt-Izhikevich network is robust to the variation of these parameters and their effects are described through graphics showing the dependence of the synchronous state frequency and acquisition time with gains, free-running frequencies, and delays.