• JSTS:Journal of Semiconductor Technology and Science
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• v.14 no.5
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• pp.579-587
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• 2014

This paper presents a variable gain amplifier (VGA) for an analog front-end (AFE) of ultrasound medical imaging. This VGA has a closed-loop topology and shows a 37-dB-linear characteristic with a single-stage amplifier. It consists of an op-amp, a non-binary-weighted capacitor array, and a gain-control block. This non-binary-weighted capacitor array reduces the required number of capacitors and the complexity of the gain-control block. The VGA has been fabricated in a 0.35-mm CMOS process. This work gives the largest gain range of 37 dB per stage, the largest P1 dB of 9.5 dBm at the 3.3-V among the recent VGA circuits available in the literature. The voltage gain is controlled in the range of [-10, 27] dB in a linear-in-dB scale with 16 steps by a 4-bit digital code. The VGA has a bandpass characteristic with a passband of [20 kHz, 8 MHz].

• 전자공학회논문지 IE
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• v.44 no.2
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• pp.14-20
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• 2007

This paper presents quaternary D flip-flop with advanced performance. Quaternary D flip-flop is composed of the components such as thermometer code output circuit, EX-OR gate, bias inverter, transmission gate and binary D flip-flop circuit. The designed circuit is simulated by HSPICE in $0.35{\mu}m$ one-poly six-metal CMOS process parameters with a single +3.3V supply voltage. In the simulations, sampling frequencies is measured around 100MHz. The PDP parameters and FOM we estimated to be 59.3fJ, 33.7 respectively.

• Proceedings of the Korea Electromagnetic Engineering Society Conference
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• 2005.11a
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• pp.279-284
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• 2005

We investigated the impedance matching characteristics of UHF-band RFID tag antenna and tag chip for increased reading range. A voltage multiplier designed using 0.4 $\mu$m zero-$V_T$ MOSFET showed that DC output voltage of about 2 V can be obtained using standard CMOS process. The input impedance of the voltage multiplier was examined to achieve impedance matching to the RFID tag antenna using analytical and numerical approaches. The input impedance of the voltage multiplier could be varied in a wide range by selecting the size of MOSFET and the number of multiplying stages, and thus can be impedance matched to a tag antenna in presence of other tag circuit blocks. A meander line inductively-coupled RFID tag antenna operating at UHF band also shows the feasibility of impedance matching to tile RFID tag chip.

• JSTS:Journal of Semiconductor Technology and Science
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.278-285
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• 2012

A digital readout IC for capacitive sensors is presented. Digital capacitance readout circuits suffer from static capacitance of sensors, especially single-ended sensors, and require large passive elements to cancel such DC offset signal. For this reason, to maximize a dynamic range with a small die area, the proposed circuit features digital filters having a coarse and fine compensation steps. Moreover, by employing switched-capacitor circuit for the front-end, correlated double sampling (CDS) technique can be adopted to minimize low-frequency device noise. The proposed circuit targeted 8-kHz signal bandwidth and oversampling ratio (OSR) of 64, thus a $3^{rd}$-order ${\Delta}{\Sigma}$ modulator operating at 1 MH was used for pulse-density-modulated (PDM) output. The proposed IC was designed in a 0.18-${\mu}m$ CMOS mixed-mode process, and occupied $0.86{\times}1.33mm^2$. The measurement results shows suppressed DC power under about -30 dBFS with minimized device flicker noise.

• JSTS:Journal of Semiconductor Technology and Science
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.165-175
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• 2010

This paper presents a fine-grain supply-voltage-control scheme for low-power FPGAs. The proposed supply-voltage-control scheme detects the critical path in real time with small overheads by exploiting features of asynchronous architectures. In an FPGA based on the proposed supply-voltage-control scheme, logic blocks on the sub-critical path are autonomously switched to a lower supply voltage to reduce the power consumption without system performance degradation. Moreover, in order to reduce the overheads of level shifters used at the power domain interface, a look-up-table without level shifters is employed. Because of the small overheads of the proposed supply-voltage-control scheme and the power domain interface, the granularity size of the power domain in the proposed FPGA is as fine as a single four-input logic block. The proposed FPGA is fabricated using the e-Shuttle 65 nm CMOS process. Correct operation of the proposed FPGA on the test chip is confirmed.

• JSTS:Journal of Semiconductor Technology and Science
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.232-239
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• 2010

By using the clock timing control at transmitter (TX), the crosstalk-induced jitter (CIJ) is compensated for in the 2-bit parallel data transmission through the coupled microstrip lines on printed circuit board (PCB). Compared to the authors' prior work, the delay block circuit is simplified by combining a delay block with a minimal number of stages and a 3-to-1 multiplexer. The delay block generates three clock signals with different delays corresponding to the channel delay of three different signal modes. The 3-to-1 multiplexer selects one of the three clock signals for TX timing depending on the signal mode. The TX is implemented by using a $0.18\;{\mu}m$ CMOS process. The measurement shows that the TX reduces the RX jitters by about 38 ps at the data rates from 2.6 Gbps to 3.8 Gbps. Compared to the authors' prior work, the amount of RX Jitter reduction increases from 28 ps to 38 ps by using the improved implementation.

• Transactions on Electrical and Electronic Materials
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• v.14 no.5
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• pp.273-277
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• 2013

A unified potentiostat circuit for both $O_2$- and $H_2O_2$- based electrochemical glucose sensors was proposed and its function was verified by circuit simulations and measurement results of a fabricated chip. This circuit consisted of an operational amplifier, a comparator and current mirrors. The proposed circuit was fabricated with a $0.13{\mu}m$ thick oxide CMOS process and an active area of $360{\mu}m{\times}100{\mu}m$. The measurements revealed an input operation range from 0.5 V to 1.6 V in the $H_2O_2$- based bio-sensor and from 1.7 V to 2.6 V in the $O_2$- based bio-sensor with a supply voltage of 3.3 V. The evaluation results showed that the proposed potentiostat circuit is suitable for measuring the electrochemical cell currents of both $O_2$- and $H_2O_2$- based glucose sensors.

• Journal of Electrical Engineering and Technology
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• v.6 no.6
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• pp.817-823
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• 2011

This paper introduces an efficient voltage multiplier circuit for improved voltage gain and power efficiency of radio frequency identification (RFID) tags. The multiplier is fully integratable and takes advantage of both passive and active circuits to reduce the required input power while yielding the desired DC voltage. A six-stage voltage multiplier and an ultralow power voltage regulator are designed in a 0.13 ${\mu}m$ complementary metal-oxide semiconductor process for 2.45 GHz RFID applications. The minimum required input power for a 1.2 V supply voltage in the case of a 50 ${\Omega}$ antenna is -20.45 dBm. The efficiency is 15.95% for a 1 $M{\Omega}$ load. The regulator consumes 129 nW DC power and maintains the reference voltage in a 1.1% range with $V_{dd}$ varying from 0.8 to 2 V. The power supply noise rejection of the regulator is 42 dB near a 2.45 GHz frequency and performs better than -32 dB from 100 Hz to 10 GHz frequencies.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.278-283
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• 2013

This paper presents a design and fabrication of 0.5 V two stage operational amplifier. The proposed operational amplifier utilizes body-driven differential input stage and self-cascode current mirror structure. Cadence Virtuoso is used for layout and the layout data is verified by LVS through Mentor Calibre. The proposed two stage operational amplifier is fabricated using $0.13{\mu}m$ CMOS process and operation at 0.5 V is confirmed. Measured low frequency small signal gain of operational amplifier is 50 dB, power consumption is $29{\mu}W$ and chip area is $75{\mu}m{\times}90{\mu}m$.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 2009.07a
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• pp.1597_1598
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• 2009

In this paper, the techniques and design focus of flexible gain coltrol of LAN(Low Noise Amplifier) using the TSMC 0.18um CMOS process. The design frequency set up a standard on 2.4GHz that is used in Zigbee system. The design concepts a basic Cascode LNA techniques and a swiching circuit consisted of 4 NMOS of load resistance, which convert the output impedenceby tuning on or off. The result show the gain change by NMOS operated swich. The simulation result is that Gain is 10.23~12.96dB and NF(Noise Figure) is 1.41~1.47dB.