2011 Events

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A PLL is perhaps the most widely used mixed-signal circuit block in a system-on-chip (SoC). Advancements in process technology offer advantages as well as challenges for the design of PLLs. This tutorial will highlight the challenges and present design techniques to overcome them. A brief discussion of PLL basics is presented first. Noise transfer functions from various points in the loop to the output are shown and the importance of having a low oscillator-gain is highlighted. Optimization of loop parameters to minimize phase-noise and area is emphasized. Challenges posed by nanometer CMOS technology are then discussed. Circuit techniques to overcome these are discussed for critical building blocks. Process and temperature compensation techniques to minimize VCO gain, capacitance multiplication techniques to minimize loop-filter area, and a rail-to-rail output swing charge-pump with matched up/down currents to minimize spurs are a few of the circuit techniques that will be discussed.

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This presentation discusses the basic concepts and development of multiport interferometer techniques (six-port in particular) and demonstrates their applications in the design of both ultra-wideband and carrier-based transceivers at microwave and millimeter-wave frequencies. Such emerging techniques can be extended to the design of transceivers over terahertz and optical ranges. Various architectures of the multiport circuits are discussed with respect to different applications. Practical implementations under different technological platforms are described with simulated and measured results for QAM and UWB applications. In particular, the equivalence between the multiport junction and mixing circuit is highlighted for direct frequency conversion and translation. It is shown that the proposed multiport technique is very promising and flexible for the low-cost design of microwave and millimeter-wave systems such as software-defined and cognitive radio architectures.

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Recently, with the aggressive scaling of the semiconductor process, silicon based semiconductor technologies have been progressively expanded into the millimeter-waves (mmW) and Terahertz (THz) applications. Cost-effective silicon based millimeter-wave/Terahertz integrated circuits (IC) design and fabrication are increasingly possible and feasible for many applications in medical, security, and non-destructive testing fields, as well as for military applications, such as, target discrimination, air and space communications. This talk will introduce silicon based device modeling, millimeter wave and Terahertz IC circuits and Tx/Rx system design techniques for terahertz communications and imaging applications, and share latest research results with audience.

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