Sharif Digital Repository

Voltage Controlled Oscillator (VCO) is one of the essential blocks in communication transceivers. The important specifications of the VCOs like Phase Noise, always is a motivation for researchers in order to introduce novel approaches to conquer these challenges. By development of technology and appearance of new fabrication technologies, this issue take more attention that the past. Also the out of control parameters like process variation and temperature, affect that. So, according to the challenges ahead and the demand of transceiver systems for low phase noise and reasonable power consumption, solutions for overcome these challenges. Finally, a class-C VCO with the tuning range of 4.25-5... 

Phase shifters are commonly used in the implementation of phased-array antenna systems.The function of these systems is highly dependent on the performance of phase shifters. In addition, phase shifter circuits are used in some applications such as antenna test and regulation, power amplifier linearization, and QAM modulator implementation, to name but a handful. In this project, design of phase shifter blocks, as well as limitations of fabrication on silicon substrate, is studied and these blocks are designed for maximum bandwidth and minimum sensitivity based on fabrication characteristics and environmental conditions. Design of a 6-bit phase shifter based on vector-sum method is the... 

Phase shifters are commonly used in the implementation of phased-array antenna systems.The function of these systems is highly dependent on the performance of phase shifters. In addition, phase shifter circuits are used in some applications such as antenna test and regulation, power amplifier linearization, and QAM modulator implementation, to name but a handful. In this project, design of phase shifter blocks, as well as limitations of fabrication on silicon substrate, is studied and these blocks are designed for maximum bandwidth and minimum sensitivity based on fabrication characteristics and environmental conditions. Design of a 6-bit phase shifter based on vector-sum method is the... 

One of the most important parameters of a smartphone is the ability to operate in a long time with a rechargeable battery. As a result, the design of radio frequency circuits which are used in these cell phones is a consistent challenge for designers. Bluetooth Low-Energy standard (BLE) which is the fourth edition of Bluetooth standard is recently introduced with the aim of transporting low volume data with minimum power consumption. The most important challenge of the design of an RF receiver in the BLE standard is the power consumption. In a typical receiver, the oscillator and the mixer are the most power hungry blocks. Therefore, decreasing the power consumption of these two blocks is... 

Few years ago, when people were talking about image sensors, the minds were automatically focusing on the pictures and photos that were/are taken for recording the memories. Nowadays, however, image sensors have prominent and unbelievable role in different aspects of our life, which "image" is only representing part of this role. A wide variety of applications image sensors can be enumerated such as, Scientific, security, medical, machine vision, ITs, biometrics, automotive, etc. To evaluate the quality of an image sensor, there are different parameters, from the dynamic range, high resolution and suitable speed to low noise, low power consumption and other parameters. The art of companies... 

This thesis presents a four-antenna phased-array transceiver front-end for 5G applications. The designed front-end uses RF architecture and time division duplexing mode and operates in the 26~30 (GHz) band. In our design procedure, we have used a four-stage inductively degenerated common source LNA, a differential three-stage PA, and a vector-sum phase shifter. Circuit blocks are connected using traditional architecture, and an SPDT switch is used to determine the Tx/Rx mode of the system. A switching current reference is designed, which enables us to control the circuit gain over different process corners and temperatures.Each transmitter chain produces 13.42 (dBm) power at its operating... 

Wideband mm-wave radars are gaining popularity in automotive applications due to their superiority in harsh weather conditions, high distance resolution, precise velocity measurement, and superior spatial resolution. The primary purpose of this thesis is to design and implement a voltage-controlled oscillator for 77GHz automotive radar applications.Phase noise -as one of the most crucial specifications in VCO design- Phase noise improvement techniques as well as harmonic engineering methods are delineated. Also, an Ocean-based code for ISF simulation is introduced and developed to obviate the need for additional signal processing software so that simulation speed increases... 

In this thesis, an X band vector modulator chip in CMOS .18 um technology is designed, implemented and measured. The receiver with two RF signal path includes differential amplifier, hybrid, attenuaters, variable gain amplifiers (VGA) and power combiner blocks respectively. Capability of gain and phase control is provided by 14 digital bit. 6 bits are used to control gain of each RF path, so that changing the phase and gain of the output signal in a trigonometric quarter shall be possible. The trigonometric quarter is selected by two single pole double throw switch. Cascode structure is utilized in amplifiers stages for its stability and isolation feature. Furthermore, in order to to enhance... 

In this thesis, study the design of a compact low-cost integrated time modulated array(TMA). In TMAs, a switch is used instead of a phase shifter, which reduces the area, complexity, power consumption and the final price of the array. The TMAs uses the switch as a control element for array weighting that causes beamforming and beam steering. For the lower cost, designed IC compacted as small as possible and use inexpensive CMOS 180nm technology of TSMC fabrication. Initially, maximum layout size forced 0.7 by 1.5 mm2. The proposed switch type is SPDT that one of its output paths terminated by a matched load and another end to a pad and then by a bond wire connected to an external board that... 

In this thesis, the design of a fully-integrated Millimeter-wave Broadband power amplifier in TSMC 0.18 µm CMOS technology is studied. The Darlington cell with cascode topology was adopted as the power cell to improve the maximum available gain of transistors in standard 0.18 µm CMOS technology to make it eligible of operating at Ka band. Furthermore, by proposing a new topology as an improved Darlington-cascode with intermediate inductor in the Darlington pair, the improvement in flat power gain at Ka band and more importantly, in available power gain of active element at high frequencies of the Ka band is achieved. The proposed power amplifier is a two stage structure with the driver stage... 

Optical computing is a new approach to the hardware implementation of devices that were previously implemented digitally and electronically. It has attracted a great deal of interest due to its benefits, which include high bandwidth, extensive internal connections, the possibility of parallel processing, high calculation speed, and low power consumption. Consequently, this type of implementation is regarded as an appropriate substrate for optical neural networks. Compact and low-power CMOS-compatible hardware can be used for on-chip optical neural networks (ONNs), enabling affordable and portable image classification solutions for applications like autonomous vehicles, healthcare, and... 

This paper presents a scalable and ultrasensitive magnetic biosensing scheme based on on-chip LC resonance frequency-shifting. The sensor transducer gain is demonstrated as being location-dependent on the sensing surface and proportional to the local polarization magnetic field strength |B|2 generated by the sensing inductor. To improve the gain uniformity, a periodic coil is proposed as a substitution for the standard process coil. As an implementation example, the circuit is designed in a 65nm CMOS process. The spatially uniform sensor gain of the array is verified by COMSOL simulations. Overall, the presented sensor demonstrates an improvement in the uniformity of the inductor’s magnetic... 

This thesis begins in an attempt to design an X band front-end receiver in GaAs pHEMT technology, suitable for microwave circuits which should be high frequency, low noise, high gain, as well as high power handling and should have stable characteristics at large number of productions. The front-end receiver consists of three blocks, namely limiter, low noise amplifier, and mixer, which are designed in ISDL group previously. The measurement result of the fabricated low noise amplifier was satisfactory, since it was close to its simulation result. However, due to the drawbacks of modeling the switching behavior of devices, the results of the two other blocks, i.e., limiter and mixer – which... 

In order to improve the performance of radar systems, encouraging the movement towards multifunctional applications, wider frequency span is required to be considered for phased array systems constituting radars. The conventional approach of phase shifting is not applicable to wideband phased array system, and the need for phased array systems based on time delay is apparent. In active phased array systems where a transceiver module is placed before each radiating element, the task of controlling the delay and gain variation of each path is assigned to individual core chips residing in the transceiver modules. A typical core chip consists of several amplifying blocks along, with delay and... 

This research examines the issues of design and fabrication of Phase Shifter circuits on Silicon substrates. The Phase Shifter circuits are designed to have wide operation band width. They also should have very low sensitivity to process and temperature variation. A six bit phase shifter is designed at this research. We use a new topology for implementing the small phase shift steps and some circuits have been designed which their phase shifts can be adjusted after fabrication. All circuits are implemented with the 0.18µm CMOS technology. The research also explains all the necessary steps for measurement of fabricated circuits. The result of measurements shows good agreement with the... 

Phased array systems which are used for sending and receiving electromagnetic signals in mandatory directions are widely used in today’s wireless communication, satellite communication, and radar systems. Phased array systems are composed of units called transmitter/ receiver (TR) modules. These units are connected to antennas in one end and to the combiner/divider at the other end and are playing a major role in determining the quality of phased arrays. Transmitter/Receiver units include a phase shifting circuit for controlling the phase and an attenuator circuit for amplitude control of the signal being sent or received, solid state switches and a number of amplifiers. The aim of this... 

In this project, an inverting Buck-Boost converter with two negative linear regulator is designed, implemented and measured in CMOS 0.18μm-HV BCD technology. Input voltage of Buck-Boost converter can vary from +15V to +28 and output voltage is digitally adjustable from -1V to -10V. Maximum output current of the converter is 300mA. A current mode controller and a lag compensator is used to control the converter. A high speed highside current sensor is designed and used in current mode controller. Sampled current of the current sensor is also used in a current limit circuitary to limit the maximum current of highside switch. Two negative linear regulators are placed at the output of the... 

In this project, issues related to designing and fabricating active phase shifter blocks on the silicon substrate have been examined. Phase shifter circuits are designed in a way that have the most bandwidth and the less sensitivity to process characteristics changes and environmental conditions. The purpose of this research, is designing an active 6 bits phase shifter. The active phase shifter synthesizes the required phase using a phase interpolation process by adding quadrature phased input signals. It uses a new quadrature all-pass filter for quadrature signaling with a wide bandwidth. Also substitute structure has been suggested to this filter which is the main block in determining... 

Fully integrated frequency synthesizer is one of the important system-on-chips building blocks. Among this circuit’s remarkable applications, Bioelectronics field is very common. In these applications, advanced microelectronic circuits are used in order to diagnosis and treatment of diseases. The aim of this thesis is design and implementation a wideband frequency synthesizer in a 0.18um CMOS technology. The main usage of this circuit is in a fully integrated implantable biomedical sensory chip. This circuit generates two necessary local signals in sensory chip to stimulus cells and process the information.
Frequency synthesizer is based on phased locked loop (PLL) circuit and produce... 

In this thesis, a Ku-band (16.3-17.3) Variable Gain Amplifier (VGA) for realizing a phase array T/R module is designed, implemented and measured in CMOS 0.18μm technology. In order to achieve a maximum gain of 15dB and NF of 4.3dB and with the idea of improving the 1-dB compression point, two gain-stages and a novel inter-stage is proposed according to pre-distortion method. Applying this linearizing technique, makes it possible to get output P-1dB higher than 18dBm. Current steering technique is used for gain control mechanism. Gain tunabality range of 31.5dB is needed and this forces 6-bit operation with 0.5dB gain-step for the VGA. Because of loading effect of higher bits on the lower...