• Journal of Advanced Information Technology and Convergence
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.37-43
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• 2020

This paper presents analysis of passive metal interconnection of the LNA block in CMOS integrated circuit. The performance of circuit is affected by the geometry of RF signal path. To investigate the effect of interconnection lines, a cascode LNA is designed, and circuit simulations with full-wave electromagnetic (EM) simulations are executed for different positions of a component. As the results, the position of an external capacitor (C_ex) changes the parasitic capacitance of electric coupling; the placement of component affects the circuit performance. This analysis of interconnection line is helpful to analyze the amount of electromagnetic coupling between the lines, and useful to choose the signal path in the layout design. The target of this work is the RF LNA enabling the seamless connection of wireless data network and the following standards have to be supported in multi-band (WCDMA: 2.11~ 2.17 GHz, CDMA200 1x : 1.84~1.87 GHz, WiBro : 2.3~2.4GHz) mobile application. This work has been simulated and verified by Cadence spectre RF tool and Ansoft HFSS. And also, this work has been implemented in a 0.13um RF CMOS technology process.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.162-170
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• 2004

A 900MHz CMOS RF power amplifier with digitally controllable output power has been proposed and designed with 0.6${\mu}{\textrm}{m}$ standard CMOS technology. The designed power amplifier was composed of digitally controllable switch mode pre-amplifiers with an integrated 4nH spiral inductor load and class-C output stage. Especially, to compensate the 1ow Q of integrated spiral inductor, cascode amplifier with a Q-enhancement circuit is used. It has been shown that the proposed power control technique allows the output power to change from almost 3dBm to 13.5dBm. And it has a maximum PAE(Power Added Efficiency) of almost 55％ at 900MHz operating frequency and 3V power supply voltage.

• Journal of electromagnetic engineering and science
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.56-62
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• 2004

We present a multi-Gbit/s digital I/O interface based on RF-modulation and capacitive-coupling over an impedance matched transmission line. The RF-interconnect(RFI) can greatly reduce the digital switching noise and eliminate the dc power dissipation over the channel. It also enables reduced signal amplitude(as low as 200 ㎷) with enhanced data rate and affordable circuit overhead. This paper addresses the system advantages and implementation issues of RFI. A prototype on-chip RFI transceiver is implemented in 0.18-${\mu}{\textrm}{m}$ CMOS. It demonstrates a maximum data rate of 2.2 Gbit/s via 10.5-㎓ RF-modulation. The RFI can be very instrumental for future high-speed inter- and intra-ULSI data links.

• JSTS:Journal of Semiconductor Technology and Science
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.277-282
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• 2008

A fully integrated inductorless CMOS impulse radio ultra-wideband (IR-UWB) receiver is implemented using $0.18\;{\mu}m$ CMOS technology for 3-5 GHz application. The UWB receiver adopts the non-coherent architecture, which removes the complexity of RF architecture and reduces power consumption. The receiver consists of inductorless differential three stage LNA, envelope detector, variable gain amplifier (VGA), and comparator. The measured sensitivity is -70 dBm in the condition of 5 Mbps and BER of $10^{-3}$. The receiver chip size is only $1.8\;mm\;{\times}\;0.9\;mm$. The consumed current is 15 mA with 1.8 V supply.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Electromagnetic Engineering and Science
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• v.18 no.5 s.120
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• pp.530-538
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• 2007

An inductor library for efficient low cost RFIC design has been developed based on a standard digital 0.18 ${\mu}m$ CMOS process. The developed library provides four structural variations that are most popular in RFIC design; standard spiral structure, patterned ground shield(PGS) structure to enhance quality factor, stacked structure to enable high inductance values in a given silicon area, multilayer structure to lower series resistance. Electromagnetic simulation, equivalent circuit, and parameter extraction processes have been verified based on measurement results. The extensive measurement and simulation results of the inductor library can be a great asset for low cost RFIC design and development.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SD
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• v.46 no.9
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• pp.68-73
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• 2009

This paper presents an easily modifiable structure of a serial peripheral interface (SPI) that is suitable for efficient testing of CMOS RF integrated circuits. The proposed SPI Is designed so that the address size and the accompanying software can be easily adjusted and modified according to the requirements and complexity of RF IC's under development. The hardware architecture and software algorithm to achieve the flexibility are described. The proposed SPI is fabricated in $0.13{\mu}m$ CMOS and successfully verified experimentally with a 2.7GHz fractional-N delta-sigma frequency synthesizer as a device under test.

• Proceedings of the IEEK Conference
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• 2006.06a
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• pp.615-616
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• 2006

Nowadays, the need of multi-mode/multi-band transceiver is rapidly increasing, so we design a direct conversion RF front-end for multi-mode/multi-band receiver that support WCDMA/CDMA2000/WIBRO standard. It consists of variable gain reconfigurable LNA and single input double balanced Mixer and complementary differential LC Oscillator. The circuit is implemented in 0.18 um RF CMOS technology and is suitable for low-cost mode/multi-band.

• JSTS:Journal of Semiconductor Technology and Science
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.198-206
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• 2011

This paper presents a new programmable compensation circuit (PCC) for a System-on-Chip (SoC). The PCC is integrated with $0.18-{\mu}m$ BiCMOS SiGe technology. It consists of RF Design-for-Testability (DFT) circuit, Resistor Array Bank (RAB) and digital signal processor (DSP). To verify performance of the PCC we built a 5-GHz low noise amplifier (LNA) with an on-chip RAB using the same technology. Proposed circuit helps it to provide DC output voltages, hence, making the RF system chain automatic. It automatically adjusts performance of an LNA with the processor in the SoC when it goes out of the normal range of operation. The PCC also compensates abnormal operation due to the unusual PVT (Process, Voltage and Thermal) variations in RF circuits.

• JSTS:Journal of Semiconductor Technology and Science
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• v.16 no.5
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• pp.595-604
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• 2016

Utilizing a standard 130-nm CMOS process, a RF frontend is designed at 24 GHz for automotive collision avoidance radar application. Single IF direct conversion receiver (DCR) architecture is adopted to achieve high integration level and to alleviate the DCR problem. The proposed frontend is composed of a two-stage LNA and downconversion mixers. To save power consumption, and to enhance gain and linearity, stacked NMOS-PMOS $g_m$-boosting technique is employed in the design of LNA as the first stage. The switch transistors in the mixing stage are biased in subthreshold region to achieve low power consumption. The single balanced mixer is designed in PMOS transistors and is also realized based on the well-known folded architecture to increase voltage headroom. This frontend circuit features enhancement in gain, linearity, and power dissipation. The proposed circuit showed a maximum conversion gain of 19.6 dB and noise figure of 3 dB at the operation frequency. It also showed input and output return losses of less than -10 dB within bandwidth. Furthermore, the port-to-port isolation illustrated excellent characteristic between two ports. This frontend showed the third-order input intercept point (IIP3) of 3 dBm for the whole circuit with power dissipation of 6.5 mW from a 1.5 V supply.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Information and Commucation Sciences Conference
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• 2011.10a
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• pp.423-424
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• 2011

This paper has proposed a 920 MHz RF front-end for IEEE 802.15.4g SUN (Smart Utility Network) systems. The proposed 920 MHz RF front-end consists of a driver amplifier, a low noise amplifier, and a RF switch. In the TX mode, the driver amplifier has been designed as a single-ended topology to remove a transformer which causes a loss of the output power from the driver amplifier. In addition, a RF switch is located in the RX path not the TX path. In the RX mode, the proposed low noise amplifier can provide a differential output signal when a single-ended input signal has been applied to. A LC resonant circuit is used as both a load of the drive amplifier and a input matching circuit of the low noise amplifier, reducing the chip area. The proposed 920 MHz RF Front-end has been implemented in a 0.18-um CMOS technology. It consumes 3.6 mA in driver amplifier and 3.1 mA in low noise amplifier from a 1.8 V supply voltage.