Analog-centric RFCMOS technology has played an important role in motivating the change of technology from conventional discrete device technology or bipolar IC technology to CMOS technology. However it introduces many problems such as poor performance, susceptibility to PVT fluctuation, and cost increase with technology scaling. The most important advantage of CMOS technology compared with legacy RF technology is that CMOS can use more high performance digital circuits for very low cost. In fact, analog-centric RF-CMOS technology has failed the FM/AM tuner business and the digital-centric CMOS technology is becoming attractive for many users. It has many advantages; such as high performance, no external calibration points, high yield, and low cost. From the above facts, digital-centric CMOS technology which utilizes the advantages of digital technology must be the right path for future RF technology. Further investment in this technology is necessary for the advancement of RF technology.

View full abstract

This paper introduces a theory for fast optimization of the circuit topology and parameters in sinusoidal oscillators. The theory starts from a system model composed of standard active and passive elements. We then include even the output load in the circuit, so that there is no longer any interaction with the outside of the system through the port. This model is thus called no-input-no-output (NINO) oscillator. The circuit is cut at an arbitrary branch, and is characterized in terms of the scalar impedance from the cut point. This is called active impedance because it is a function of not only the stimulating frequency but also the active device gain. The oscillation frequency and necessary device gain are estimated by solving impedance-domain Barkhausen equilibrium equations. This estimation works for the adjustment of circuit elements to meet the specified oscillation frequency. The estimation of necessary device gain enables us to maximize the oscillation amplitude, thanks to the inherent negative-slope nonlinearity of active devices. The active impedance is also used to derive the oscillation Q (quality) factor, which serves as a key criterion for sideband noise minimization i.e. frequency spectrum purification. As an alternative measure to active impedance, we also introduce branch admittance matrix determinant. This has the same numerical effect as the scalar impedance but can be used to formulate oscillator characteristics in a more elegant fashion, and provides a lucent picture of the physical behavior of each element in the circuit. Based on the proposed theory, we provide the tabled formulas of oscillation frequency, necessary device gain, active Q factor for a variety of typical Colpitts, Hartley, and cross-coupled twin-FET (field-effect transistor) oscillators.

View full abstract

To realize low-power wireless transceivers, it is necessary to improve the performance of frequency synthesizers, which are typically frequency multipliers composed of a phase-locked loop (PLL). However, PLLs generally consume a large amount of power and occupy a large area. To improve the frequency multiplier, we propose a pulse-injection-locked frequency multiplier (PILFM), where a spurious signal is suppressed using a pulse input signal. An injection-locked oscillator (ILO) in a PILFM was fabricated by a 0.18µm 1P5M CMOS process. The core size is 10.8µm × 10.5µm. The power consumption of the ILO is 9.6µW at 250MHz, 255µW at 2.4GHz and 1.47mW at 4.8GHz. The phase noise is -105dBc/Hz at a 1MHz offset.

View full abstract

A highly integrated frequency quadrupler MMIC that uses three-dimensional MMIC (3D-MMIC) technology is presented. It consists of four driver amplifiers, two doublers, and a 2-band elimination filter. These seven circuits are integrated in only a 2.36mm² area. The filter sufficiently suppresses spurious output components. The third and fifth harmonic components, which are the spurious components nearest to the desired component, are well suppressed. The desired/undesired ratio is about 40dB. The driver amplifiers make the quadrupler output a constant power of the desired multiplied signal under low input power. The MMIC supplies +5dBm of the fourth harmonic component in the input power range from -10dBm to +5dBm. The power dissipation of the MMIC is only 160mW.

View full abstract

This paper represents a novel second harmonic power combining oscillator using mutually synchronized Gunn diodes embedded on slot line resonators. A both-sided MIC technology is adopted in the oscillator. The oscillator consists of Gunn diodes, slot line resonators and microstrip lines. By embedding Gunn diodes on the slot line resonators, the harmonic RF signal can be generated very easily. The microstrip lines are used for the power combining output circuit. This oscillator has advantages such as easy circuit design, simple circuit configuration and miniaturization of the circuit size. The second harmonic oscillator is designed and fabricated in K-Band. The output power is +5.75dBm at the design frequency of 19.0GHz (2f₀) with the phase noise of -111.7dBc/Hz at the offset frequency of 1MHz. Excellent suppression of the undesired fundamental frequency signal (f₀) of -39dBc is achieved.

View full abstract

Compact and planar active integrated antenna arrays with a high power multi-stage amplifier were developed with effective heat sink mechanism. By attaching an aluminum plate to the backside of the creased amplifier circuit board, effective cooling can be achieved. The nonlinear behavior of the amplifier agrees well with the simulation based on the Angelov model. The high power amplifier circuit consisted of the three-stage amplifier and operated with an output power of 4W per each element at 5.8GHz. The 32-element active integrated antenna array stably operated with the output power of 120W under the effective heat sink design. With a weight of 4kg, the weight-to-output power ratio and the volume-to-output power ratio of the antenna array are 33.3g/W and 54.5cm³/W, respectively. Wireless power transmission was also successfully demonstrated.

View full abstract

A new structure of a waveguide-type left-handed transmission line is proposed. It is composed of two rectangular waveguides with many stubs. One waveguide is put on another waveguide symmetrically. When one mode with odd electric field distribution is excited, the stubs work as open stubs and the mode propagates with very small loss. Guided regions of the left-handed mode and a right-handed mode are discussed using an approximate equivalent circuit. Tuning the structure parameters, the band gap between the two regions can be removed, and the wave propagates continuously from the left-handed frequency regions to the right-handed frequency region. The transmission line is applied to a leaky waveguide. It is confirmed experimentally that the beam angle of the radiation wave changes from the backward to the forward directions.

View full abstract

A new elliptic-function bandpass filter (BPF) is proposed, which utilizes an inter-digital coupled line (IDCPL) as a left-handed transmission line. The IDCPL is employed in order to realize a negative coupling between non-adjacent resonators in a wideband BPF. As the authors' knowledge, the left-handed operations of the IDCPL has rarely utilized before, although the IDCPL itself has been widely used in many microwave circuits without being paid attention to the left-handed operations. Measured characteristics of two BPFs are presented in this paper, one is targeted for 3-4GHz WiMAX systems, and the other is for 3-5GHz ultra wideband communication systems (UWB).

View full abstract

New structure of broadband planar antenna, combining monopole elements with electromagnetic bandgap (EBG) structures, is proposed. The antenna has a simple single layer structure and unique beam pattern. Antenna is fabricated on a surface of a single layer dielectric substrate and back side of the substrate is covered with metal layer. At the center of the substrate, an inverted L monopole strip is fabricated and on both sides of this monopole, EBG unit cells are placed. By tuning monopole length and EBG bandgap frequency, the monopole resonates even if metal layer exists close to the monopole radiator. Three types of EBG, one dimensional (1D), square two dimensional (2D) and hexagonal 2D, are tested. By combining monopole strip with hexagonal 2D-EBG, the bandwidth of prototype antenna, whose return loss is less than 10dB, is 840MHz in 5GHz band. To control beam patterns of antenna, parasitic elements are placed close to the monopole radiator and EBGs. These parasitic elements work as directors of quasi Yagi-Uda antenna and radiation gain at lower tilt angles is improved.

View full abstract

To realize the compact ultra-wideband (UWB) bandpass filters, a novel filter prototype with two short-circuited stubs loaded at both sides of a stepped-impedance resonator (SIR) via the parallel coupled lines is proposed based on a distributed filter synthesis theory. The equivalent circuit of this filter is established, while the corresponding 7-pole Chebyshev-type transfer function is derived for filter synthesis. Then, a distributed-circuit-based technique was presented to synthesize the elements' values of this filter. As an example, a FCC UWB filter with the fractional bandwidth (FWB) @ -10dB up to 110% was designed using the proposed prototype and then re-modeled by commercial microwave circuit simulator to verify the correctness and accuracy of the synthesis theory. Furthermore, in terms of EM simulator, the filter was further-optimized and experimentally-realized by using microstrip line. Good agreements between the measurement results and theoretical ones validate the effectiveness of our technique. In addition, compared with the conventional SIR-type UWB filter without short-circuited stubs, the new one significantly improves the selectivity and out-of-band characteristics (especially in lower one -45dB@1-2GHz) to satisfy the FCC's spectrum mask. The designed filter also exhibits very compact size, quite low insertion loss, steep skirts, flat group delay and the easily-fabricatable structure (the coupling gap dimension in this filter is 0.15mm) as well. Moreover, it should be noted that, in terms of the presented design technique, the proposed filter prototype can be also used to easily realize the UWB filters with other FBW even greater than 110%.

View full abstract

This paper describes a novel Wilkinson power divider operating at two arbitrary different frequencies. The proposed divider consists of two-section transmission lines and a series RLC circuit connected between two output ports. The circuit parameters for a dual-band operation are derived by the even/odd mode analysis. Equal power split, complete matching, and good isolation between two output ports are numerically demonstrated. Dual-band and broadband Wilkinson power dividers can be successfully designed. Finally, verification of this design method is also shown by electromagnetic simulations and experiments.

View full abstract

Three miniaturized lumped-element power dividers with a filtering function for use in quadrature mixers are described. Simulation results showed that they can be miniaturized, as compared to conventional ones with open/short stubs, while maintaining the filter characteristics. A fabricated 0.95-GHz 0° power divider with a filtering function had a chip size about half that of a conventional lumped-element one. Its insertion loss at 0.95 ± 0.05GHz was 4.0 ± 0.1dB.

View full abstract

A novel CMOS LC quadrature oscillator (QO) which adopts complementary-coupling circuitry has been proposed. The performance improvement in I/Q phase error and phase noise of the proposed QO, is explained in comparison with conventional QOs. The proposed QO is implemented in 0.18µm CMOS technology along with conventional QOs. The measurement result of the proposed QO shows -133.5dBc/Hz of phase noise at 1MHz offset and 0.6° I/Q phase difference, while oscillating at 1.77GHz. The proposed QO shows more than 6.5dB phase noise improvement compared to that of the conventional QOs over the offset frequency range of 10K-1MHz, while dissipating 4mA from 1.4V supply.

View full abstract

This article presents a new design concept of a glucose oxidase (GOD) electrode as an anode for a biofuel cell based on plasma-polymerized thin film (PPF) of dimethylaminomethylferrocene (DMAMF), which plays a role as an electron transfer mediator between the active site of the enzyme and anodic electrode. The configuration of the anode is a multilayer mixture of DMAMF-PPF and GOD, in which a nano-thin DMAMF-PPF containing a redox mediator was plasma-deposited directly onto a GOD-physisorbed electrode. The optimized biofuel cell with bioanode, in a 20mM phosphate buffer solution of pH 7.4 containing 10mM glucose, exhibited a maximum power density of 2.7µW/cm² at 20°C. The film deposition was performed using microfabrication-compatible organic plasma, which therefore suggests this fabrication process has significant potential for enabling high throughput production of micro biofuel cells.

View full abstract

A novel amplification mechanism of traveling TM wave on an electron beam within a waveguide structure is proposed. Under boundary constraint of the waveguide, a hybrid coupling of longitudinal plasma wave and transverse guided one occurs to result in traveling instability. The instability refers to a backward traveling amplification. The new amplification in the waveguide due to the interactive coupling between the space charge mode and the waveguide one is firstly pointed out. The analysis is extended to the relativistic energy range to get a large gain. The features and properties are discussed for a wide frequency range as well as a high gain-bandwidth product.

View full abstract

A silicon lateral photodiode is fabricated by standard 0.18µm CMOS process, and the optical detection property is characterized. The photodiode has interdigital electrode structure with the electrode width of 0.22µm and the electrode spacing of 0.6µm. At 830nm wavelength, the responsivity is 0.12A/W at low bias voltage, and is increased to 0.6A/W due to avalanche amplification. The bandwidth is also enhanced from 12MHz at low bias voltage to 100MHz at the bias voltage close to the breakdown voltage.

View full abstract

This Letter employs transmission-line theory for the impedance-matching circuits for a single-chip power amplifier (PA) and verifies for 5GHz-band wireless LAN (IEEE 802.11a) applications. The presented matching circuits are composed of conductor-backed coplanar waveguide (CPW) meander-line resonators and impedance (K) inverters. One of the advantages of the presented circuits is that it can save on-chip space occupied by the matching circuits compared to that using the spiral inductors, thus reducing the cost. The prototype chip, which consists of PA and matching circuits, is designed employing the presented theory and fabricated. A few of the measured results to verify the design theory are presented.

View full abstract

A wideband InGaP/GaAs HBT MMIC amplifier with a low noise characteristic has been developed as a full-band UWB receiver. The amplifier was designed by applying a scaling law to a driver amplifier in order to decrease power consumption, including a modification for decreasing a noise figure. A triple base structure for a double-emitter HBT was employed to decrease a base resistance and to decrease a noise figure of the amplifier. A fabricated amplifier provided a 3-dB gain roll-off bandwidth from 1.1GHz to 10.6GHz with a 14.1dB peak power gain. The amplifier exhibited a low power consumption of 15.9mW and a low noise figure of less than 3.7dB in the full-band of the UWB.

View full abstract

This letter presents point diffusion clock network (PDCN) with local clock tree synthesis (CTS) scheme. The clock network is implemented with ten times wider metal line space than typical mesh networks for low power and utilized to nine times smaller area CTS execution for minimized clock skew amount. The measurement results show that skew amount of PDCN with local CTS is reduced to 36% and latency is shrunk to 45% of the amount in a 4.81mm² CortexA-8 core with 65nm Samsung process.

View full abstract