• Journal of IKEEE
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.65-74
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• 2010

The Digital TV(DTV) standard has ushered in a new era in TV broadcasting and raised a great demand for DTV tuners. There are many challenges in designing a DTV tuner, of which the most difficult part is the frequency synthesizer. This paper presents the design of a frequency synthesizer for DTV Tuners in a $0.18{\mu}m$ CMOS process. It satisfies the DTV(ATSC) frequency band(54~806MHz). A scheme is proposed to cover the full band using only one VCO. The VCO has been designed to operate at 1.6~3.6GHz band such that the LO pulling effect is minimized, and reliable broadband characteristics have been achieved by reducing the variations of VCO gain and frequency step. The simulation results show that the designed VCO has gains of 59~94MHz(${\pm}$17.7MHz/V,${\pm}$23%) and frequency steps of 26~42.5MHz(${\pm}$8.25MHz/V,${\pm}$24%), and a very wide tuning range of 76.9%. The designed frequency synthesizer has a phase noise of -106dBc/Hz at 100kHz offset, and the lock time is less than $10{\mu}$sec. It consumes 20~23mA from a 1.8V supply, and the chip size including PADs is 2.0mm${\times}$1.8mm.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.15 no.5
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• pp.1125-1134
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• 2011

In this paper a wideband frequency synthesizer is designed for DTV tuners using a $0.18{\mu}m$ CMOS process. It satisfies the DTV frequency band(48~1675MHz). A scheme is proposed to cover the full band using only one VCO and reliable broadband characteristics are achieved by reducing the variations of VCO gains and frequency steps. The simulation results show that the designed VCO has frequency range of 1.85~4.22GHz, phase noise at 4.22GHz of -89.7dBc/Hz@100kHz, gains of 62.4~95.8MHz/V(${\pm}21.0%$) and frequency steps of 22.9~47.9MHz(${\pm}35.3%$). The designed VCO has a phase noise of -89.75dBc/Hz at 100kHz offset. The designed synthesizer has a lock time less than $0.15{\mu}s$. The measured VCO tuning range is 2.05~3.4GHz. The frequency range is shifted down but still satisfy the target range owing to the design for enough margin. The designed circuit consumes 23~27mA from a 1.8V supply, and the chip size including PADs is $2.0mm{\times}1.5mm$.

• IEIE Transactions on Smart Processing and Computing
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• v.4 no.3
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• pp.141-144
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• 2015

A broadband radio frequency synthesizer for multi-band, multi-standard mobile DTV tuners is proposed, it's loop bandwidth can be calibrated to optimize integrated phase noise performance without the problem of phase noise peaking. For this purpose, we proposed a new third-order scalable loop filter and a scalable charge pump circuit to minimize the variation in phase margin during calibration. The prototype phase-lock loop is fabricated in 180nm complementary metal-oxide semiconductor shows that it effectively prevents phase noise peaking from growing while the loop bandwidth increases by up to three times.

• Journal of Broadcast Engineering
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• v.13 no.5
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• pp.636-650
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• 2008

DTV has a great advantage as compared to Analog TV in picture quality under low reception field strength. Various high quality tuners have been developed to result in much smaller Noise Figure of the receivers and many trials for receiving DTV signal through indoor antenna. In this paper, results of intensive field tests on the indoor reception of DTV are presented. Tests were carried out around Seoul-Gyeonggi Metropolitan area. Commercial directional and omni-directional antennas and 5th generation receiver were used for reception availability tests. The effects of heights, locations, and types of the house as well as the distance to the transmitter on the reception performances are analyzed. Our test results will be applied to improve the indoor reception environment of DTV.