Though millimeter wave applications have attracted much attention in recent years, they have not yet been put to practical use. The major reason for the failure may be a large transmission loss peculiar to the short wavelength. In order to overcome the inconvenience, it may be promising to introduce the technology of millimeter-wave NRD-guide circuits. In this technology, not only NRD-guide but also Gunn diodes and Schottky diodes play the important role in high bit-rate millimeter-wave applications. A variety of practical millimeter wave wireless systems have been proposed and fabricated. Performances and applications of them are discussed in detail as well.

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In this paper, the research advances in SIW-like (Substrate Integrated Waveguide-like) guided wave structures and their applications in the State Key Laboratory of Millimeter Waves of China is reviewed. Our work is concerned with the investigations on the propagation characteristics of SIW, half-mode SIW (HMSIW) and the folded HMSIW (FHMSIW) as well as their applications in microwave and millimeter wave filters, diplexers, directional couplers, power dividers, antennas, power combiners, phase shifters and mixers etc. Selected results are presented to show the interesting features and advantages of those new techniques.

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In this paper, we present the development of an advanced MMIC receiver for a 94-GHz band passive millimeter-wave (PMMW) imager. Our configuration is based on a Dicke receiver in order to reduce fluctuations in the detected voltage. By introducing an electronic switch in the MMIC, we achieved a high resolution millimeter-wave image in a shorter image collection time compared to that with a conventional mechanical chopper. We also developed an imaging array using MMIC receivers.

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Bessel beams are a family of diffraction-free beams. They have many unique properties and prospective applications. Much attention has been focused to this subject in optics. Recently, the studies of such beams at mm- and submm- wavebands have been carried out in our group. The investigation results, including their theories, generation, propagation and potential applications, are presented in this paper.

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This paper presents the dual-band bandpass filters (BPFs) design composed of λ/2 and symmetrically/asymmetrically paired λ/4 stepped impedance resonators (SIRs) for the WLAN applications. The filters cover both the operating frequencies of 2.45 and 5.2GHz. The dual-coupling mechanism is used in the filter design to provide alternative routes for signals of selected frequencies. A prototype filter is composed of λ/2 and symmetrical λ/4 SIRs. The enhanced wide-stopband filter is then developed from the filter with the symmetrical λ/4 SIRs replaced by the asymmetrical ones. The asymmetrical λ/4 SIRs have their higher resonances frequencies isolated from the adjacent I/O SIRs and extend the enhanced filter an upper stopband limit beyond ten time the fundamental frequency. Also, the filter might possess a cross-coupling structure which introduces transmission zeros by the passband edges to improve the signal selectivity. The tapped-line feed is adopted in this circuit to create additional attenuation poles for improving the stopband rejection levels. Experiments are conducted to verify the circuit performance.

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A novel waveguide power divider based on a coaxial-to-waveguide transition using a H-plane probe is presented. The waveguide consists of split metal blocks and substrates which are alternately stacked. The power divider is realized by arranging identical transitions using coaxial probes short-circuited with metal patterns on the substrate. The parasitic reactance of probes can be canceled out with the metal patterns on the substrate, so it is ease to design the power divider. The advantages of this structure are small footprint, low insertion loss, simple fabrication, and ease of design. A design method of the proposed power divider is described. The fabricated eight-way power divider shows excellent performances at 10GHz-band.

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In this paper, the feasibility of composite right/left-handed transmission lines for realizing proximity coupled interconnects is reported. The proposed interconnects' resonant length can be miniaturized due to the zeroth order resonance supported by a composite right/left-handed transmission line resonator. In addition, the proposed interconnects can achieve broadside coupling because the zeroth order resonance occurs in the fast-wave region. Simulated and measured electric field distributions are shown to explain the broadside coupling phenomenon. To validate the arbitrary size and broadside coupling of the proposed interconnects, simulated and measured transmission characteristics are presented. The results show that low insertion loss can be achieved by using single and double broadside coupling between interconnects.

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A flexible noise de-embedding method for on-wafer microwave measurements of silicon MOSFETs is presented in this study. We use the open, short, and thru dummy structures to subtract the parasitic effects from the probe pads and interconnects of a fixtured MOS transistor. The thru standard are used to extract the interconnect parameters for subtracting the interconnect parasitics in gate, drain, and source terminals of the MOSFET. The parasitics of the dangling leg in the source terminal are also modeled and taken into account in the noise de-embedding procedure. The MOS transistors and de-embedding dummy structures were fabricated in a standard CMOS process and characterized up to 20GHz. Compared with the conventional de-embedding methods, the proposed technique is accurate and area-efficient.

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This paper presents a new signaling architecture for radio-access control in wireless communications systems. Called THREP (for THREe-phase link set-up Process), it enables systems with low-cost configurations to provide tetherless access and wide-ranging mobility by using autonomous radio-link controls for fast cell searching and distributed call management. A signaling architecture generally consists of a radio-access part and a service-entity-access part. In THREP, the latter part is divided into two steps: preparing a communication channel, and sustaining it. Access control in THREP is thus composed of three separated parts, or protocol phases. The specifications of each phase are determined independently according to system requirements. In the proposed architecture, the first phase uses autonomous radio-link control because we want to construct low-power indoor wireless communications systems. Evaluation of channel usage efficiency and hand-over loss probability in the personal handy-phone system (PHS) shows that THREP makes the radio-access sub-system operations in a practical application model highly efficient, and the results of a field experiment show that THREP provides sufficient protection against severe fast CNR degradation in practical indoor propagation environments.

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An L-band 4-bit RL/RC-switched active phase shifter using differential switches is developed. It employs RL/RC circuits in the design of series feedback loops of the quadrature differential amplifier and achieves 90°, 45°, and 22.5° of phase shift by switching on and off the RL/RC circuits alternatively. On the other hand, a 180°phase shift is achieved with the use of a phase difference between the differential outputs. By cascading all four bits, an insertion gain of 16 to 23dB, a phase error of less than ±8.5°, and an RMS phase error of 4.6°have been achieved at 1GHz.

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This paper describes the characteristic of negative group delay (NGD) circuits for various configurations including first-order, distributed, and second-order RC circuit configurations. This study includes locus, magnitude, and phase characteristics of the NGD circuits. The simplest NGD circuit is available using first-order RC or RL configuration. As an example of distributed circuit configuration, it is verified that losses in a distributed line causes NGD characteristic at higher cut-off band of a coupled four-line bandpass filter. Also, novel wideband NGD circuits using second-order RC configuration, instead of conventional RLC configuration, are proposed. Adding a parallel resistor to a parallel-T filter enables NGD characteristic to it. Also, a Wien-Robinson bridge is modified to have NGD characteristic by controlling the voltage division ratio. They are fabricated on MMIC substrate, and their NGD characteristics are verified with measured results. They have larger insertion loss than multi-stage RLC NGD circuits, however they can realize second-order NGD characteristic without practical implementation of inductors.

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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the possible impact of cellular phones' signals on implantable cardiac pacemakers in elevators. This is achieved by carrying out precise numerical simulations based on the Finite-Difference-Time-Domain method to examine the electromagnetic fields in elevator models. In order to examine the realistic and complicated situations where humans are present in the elevator, we apply the realistic homogeneous human phantom and cellular radios operating in the frequency bands 800MHz, 1.5GHz and 2GHz. These computed results of field strength inside the elevator are compared with a certain reference level determined from the experimentally obtained maximum interference distance of implantable cardiac pacemakers. This enables us to carry out a quantitative evaluation of the EMI risk to pacemakers by cellular radio transmission. The results show that for the case when up to 5 mobile radio users are present in the elevator model used, there is no likelihood of pacemaker malfunction for the frequency bands 800MHz, 1.5GHz and 2GHz.

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The novel SCR-based (silicon controlled rectifier) device for ESD power clamp is presented in this paper. The proposed device has a high holding voltage and a high triggering current characteristic. These characteristics enable latch-up immune normal operation as well as superior full chip ESD protection. The device has a small area in requirement robustness in comparison to ggNMOS (gate grounded NMOS). The proposed ESD protection device is designed in 0.25μm and 0.5μm CMOS Technology. In the experimental result, the proposed ESD clamp has a double trigger characteristic, a high holding voltage of 4V and a high trigger current of above 350mA. The robustness has measured to HBM 8kV (HBM: Human Body Model) and MM 400V (MM: Machine Model). The proposed device has a high level It2 of 52mA/μm approximately.

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This work describes a 12-bit 100MS/s 0.13μm CMOS ADC for 3G wireless communication systems such as two-carrier W-CDMA applications. The proposed ADC employs a four-step pipeline architecture to optimize power consumption and chip area at the target resolution and sampling rate. Area-efficient gate-bootstrapped sampling switches of the input SHA maintain high signal linearity over the Nyquist rate even at a 1.0V supply. The cascode compensation using a low-impedance feedback path in two-stage amplifiers of the SHA and MDACs achieves the required conversion speed and phase margin with less power consumption and area compared to the Miller compensation. A low-glitch dynamic latch in the sub-ranging flash ADCs reduces kickback noise referred to the input of comparator by isolating the pre-amplifier from the regeneration latch output. The proposed on-chip current and voltage references are based on triple negative TC circuits. The prototype ADC in a 0.13μm 1P8M CMOS technology demonstrates the measured DNL and INL within 0.38LSB and 0.96LSB at 12-bit, respectively. The ADC shows a maximum SNDR and SFDR of 64.5dB and 78.0dB at 100MS/s, respectively. The ADC with an active die area of 1.22mm² consumes 42.0mW at 100MS/s and a 1.2V supply, corresponding to a figure-of-merit of 0.31pJ/conversion-step.

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We propose a novel 50Mb/s optical transmitter fabricated in a 0.6μm BiCMOS technology for automotive applications. The proposed VCSEL driver chip was designed to operate with a single supply voltage ranging from 3.0V to 5.25V. A fully integrated feedforward current control circuit is presented to stabilize the optical output power without any external components. The experimental results show that the optical output power can be stable within a 1.1dB range and the extinction ratio greater than 14dB over the automotive environmental temperature range of -40°C to 105°C.

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In this paper, a low power current protection circuit implemented in a low dropout regulator (LDO) is presented. The proposed circuit, designed in a 0.35μm CMOS process, provides a precise limiting current as well as holding current with low dependency on both supply voltage and regulator output voltage. The experimental results showed that the proposed circuit is operable in the regulator output voltage range from VOUT=1.2V to VOUT=3.6V and supply voltage range from VDD=VOUT+0.5V to VDD=5.6V. Since the proposed circuit is composed of few simple basic circuits such as a comparator and a Schmitt Trigger, it has a low current consumption of less than ISS=0.82μA at a load current of ILOAD=200mA. This makes the circuit suitable for low power and low voltage LDO design.

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Due to the recent increase in electronic devices mounted on automobiles, a large number of connectors, especially low-cost tin plated connectors are being used. As a result, their contact reliability has become problematic. Furthermore, for the connectors which are subjected to fretting wear caused by heat cycle and vibrations, the contact resistance increases because of wear of tin and deposition of oxides, which generates problems of poor contact. This study is intended to analyze the change in contact resistance of tin plated connectors from the start of fretting wear to the end of their lifetime from the viewpoint of practical reliability, and to observe the trace and the characteristics of fretting wear microscopically. This study found that wear and oxidation of tin plated connectors start immediately with fretting wear, and thus accumulation of abrasion powder on fretting areas causes connectors to reach to the end of their useful lifetime quickly. Especially, it was demonstrated that amplitude of fretting has a considerable influence on a connector's lifetime. It is made clear that air-tightness, so-called “gas-tight” of tin in a fretting area influences fretting wear considerably.

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A 0.13-μm CMOS 2.4-GHz low-noise balun-mixer is proposed, where a noise-canceling transconductance stage is adopted for low-noise characteristics. A current-bleeding circuit with an LC resonator is also adopted to further improve the noise figure of the proposed balun-mixer, without additional DC power consumption. The measured results show a DSB NF of 5.5dB over output IF frequency ranges of 10 to 100MHz, a conversion gain of 19dB, and an input P_1dB of -16dBm. The proposed balun-mixer is implemented in 0.13-μm CMOS technology and consumes only 4.5mA from a 1.5-V supply voltage.

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This letter presents a new quadrature voltage-controlled oscillator (QVCO) consisting of two n-core Colpitts voltage-controlled oscillators (VCOs) with a tail inductor. The VCOs are used as a single-ended injected injection-locked frequency divider (ILFD). The output of the tail inductor in one ILFD is injected into the injection node in the other ILFD and vice versa. The proposed QVCO has been implemented in the 0.18μm CMOS technology. At the supply voltage of 1.0V, the power consumption is 1.8mW. The free-running frequency is tunable from 4.68GHz to 5.03GHz as the tuning voltage is varied from 0.0V to 1.8V. The measured phase noise is -113.58dBc/Hz at the 1MHz frequency offset from the oscillation frequency of 5.03GHz and the figure of merit (FOM) of the QVCO is -185.06dBc/Hz.

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