A CMOS UWB Pulse Generator for 6–10 GHz Applications

A CMOS ultra wideband (UWB) pulse generator with low energy dissipation and high peak amplitude is presented for 6–10 GHz applications. The pulse generator complies with the FCC spectral mask for indoor UWB systems. It consists of a glitch generator, a pulsed oscillator, and a pulse shaping filter. The pulsed oscillator is switched on by the glitch signal only for a short duration, so as to make a UWB pulse. For sub-nanosecond pulse generation, a pulsed oscillator with fast transient response is proposed. A pulse shaping filter makes the oscillator output fall into the FCC spectral mask. The pulse generator is fabricated using a 0.18 $mu$ m CMOS process. The core chip has a size of 0.11 mm $^{2}$. It shows pulse duration of about 500 ps with ${-}10$ dB bandwidth of 4.5 GHz from 5.9 to 10.4 GHz. The energy consumption is 27.6 pJ per pulse with a peak-to-peak amplitude of 673 mV on a 50 $Omega$ output load. The generated pulses are very coherent with 1.8 ps RMS jitter.