• The Journal of Korean Institute of Electromagnetic Engineering and Science
• /
• v.25 no.3
• /
• pp.289-295
• /
• 2014

In this paper a wideband active balun using advanced phase correction architecture is proposed. The proposed active balun is constructed with each different architecture of active balun combined with the cascode architecture to improve phase correction performance compared with conventional phase correction techniques. Operating over 0.6~2.0 GHz band, the proposed balun shows $10^{\circ}$ of phase error and 2 dB of gain error with 7 mW power consumption from 1.8 V supply voltage.

• JSTS:Journal of Semiconductor Technology and Science
• /
• v.15 no.6
• /
• pp.629-633
• /
• 2015

An active balun using current steering for phase correction is presented. The proposed active balun is constructed with two different unit balun structures based on current steering to reduce phase and amplitude errors. This type of topology can be compared with the conventional phase and amplitude correction techniques which do not incorporate the current steering. Designed and fabricated active balun in $0.18{\mu}m$ CMOS process operates over 0.95 - 1.45 GHz band, showing input reflection coefficient under -15 dB, phase error of $11^{\circ}$ and gain error of 0.5 dB. Gain is measured to be 0.3 dB maximum and power consumption of 7.2 mW is measured.

• 한국정보통신설비학회:학술대회논문집
• /
• 2007.08a
• /
• pp.423-426
• /
• 2007

An active Balun is designed for RFID reader at 2.45GHz. The Balun is integrated inside the receiver, then the LNA and mixer can be connected. The unbalanced LNA output signal is transformed to a balanced signal at the input mixer The RF mixer and LO mixer, by using this balun. The Balun provided a balanced signal with two output stage, gain mismatch is 0.116dB. The phase show a good behavior with $163.918^{\circ}$,$-16.609^{\circ}$. The phase mismatch is about $0.527^{\circ}$. The tight difference between the gain and phase on each brancd, is because of the used capacitor and integrated inductor and the other parasitic element inside the balun.

• Proceedings of the IEEK Conference
• /
• 2005.11a
• /
• pp.261-264
• /
• 2005

This paper presents the design of a down-conversion mixer with built-in active balun integrated in a $0.25\;{\mu}m$ pHEMT process. The active balun consists of series-connected common-gate FET and common-source FET. The designed balun achieved broadband characteristics by optimizing gate-width and bias condition for the reduction in parasitic effect. From DC to more than 6GHz, the active balun shows the phase error of less than 3 degree and the gain error of less than 0.4 dB. A single-balanced down-conversion mixer with built-in broadband active balun has been designed with optimum width, load resistor and bias for conversion gain and without any matching component for broadband operating. The designed mixer whose size of including on-chip bias circuit is $1\;mm{\times}1\;mm$ shows the conversion gain of better than 7 dB from 2 GHz to 6 GHz and $P_{1dB}$ of -10 dBm at 5.8 GHz

• ETRI Journal
• /
• v.27 no.5
• /
• pp.569-578
• /
• 2005

The purpose of this paper is to describe the implementation of monolithically matching circuits, interface circuits, and RF core circuits to the same substrate. We designed and fabricated on-chip 1 to 6 GHz up-conversion and 1 to 8 GHz down-conversion mixers using a 0.8 mm SiGe hetero-junction bipolar transistor (HBT) process technology. To fabricate a SiGe HBT, we used a reduced pressure chemical vapor deposition (RPCVD) system to grow a base epitaxial layer, and we adopted local oxidation of silicon (LOCOS) isolation to separate the device terminals. An up-conversion mixer was implemented on-chip using an intermediate frequency (IF) matching circuit, local oscillator (LO)/radio frequency (RF) wideband matching circuits, LO/IF input balun circuits, and an RF output balun circuit. The measured results of the fabricated up-conversion mixer show a positive power conversion gain from 1 to 6 GHz and a bandwidth of about 4.5 GHz. Also, the down-conversion mixer was implemented on-chip using LO/RF wideband matching circuits, LO/RF input balun circuits, and an IF output balun circuit. The measured results of the fabricated down-conversion mixer show a positive power conversion gain from 1 to 8 GHz and a bandwidth of about 4.5 GHz.

• JSTS:Journal of Semiconductor Technology and Science
• /
• v.8 no.2
• /
• pp.143-149
• /
• 2008

A novel compact model for a five-port transformer balun is proposed for the efficient circuit design of hybrid balun. Compared to the conventional model, the proposed model provides much faster computation time and more reasonable values for the extracted parameters. The hybrid balun, realized in $0.18\;{\mu}m$ CMOS, achieves 2.8 dB higher gain and 1.9 dB lower noise figure than its passive counterpart only at a current consumption of 0.67 mA from 1.2 V supply. By employing the hybrid balun, a differential zero-IF receiver is designed in $0.18\;{\mu}m$ CMOS for IEEE 802.15.4 ZigBee applications. It is composed of a differential cascode LNA, passive mixers, and active RC filters. Comparative investigations on the three receiver designs, each employing the hybrid balun, a simple transformer balun, and an ideal balun, clearly demonstrate the advantages of the hybrid balun in fully differential CMOS RF receivers. The simulated results of the receiver with the hybrid balun show 33 dB of conversion gain, 4.2 dB of noise figure with 20 kHz of 1/f noise corner frequency, and -17.5 dBm of IIP3 at a current consumption of 5 mA from 1.8 V supply.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
• /
• v.56 no.11
• /
• pp.1982-1987
• /
• 2007

This paper presents the design and analysis of LNA-Mixer for 2.45GHz RFID reader. The LNA is implemented by PCSNIM method for low power consumption. The Mixer is implemented by using the Gilbert-type configuration, current bleeding technique and the resonating technique for the tail capacitance. The connection between the two designed circuits is made by active balun. This LNA-Mixer has about 22dB gain and 8.5dB Noise Figure for -50dBm input RF power, LO power is 0dBm, RF frequency is 2.45 GHz and IF frequency is 100kHz. The layout of LNA-Mixer for one-chip design in a 0.18-um TSMC process has $2.5mm{\times}1.0mm$ size.

• Journal of Advanced Marine Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.37 no.1
• /
• pp.99-104
• /
• 2013

In this paper, we developed a fully integrated downconverter MMIC (monolithic microwave integrated circuit) including Lange coupler and output active balun for millimeter wave applications. Concretely, ${\lambda}$/4 transmission line was added to Lange coupler for size reduction of RF/LO input, and mixed RF/LO signals were applied to gate of the FET of mixer. Active balun was used at output port for a coupling of out-of-phase IF output signals. According to measured results, the proposed downconverter MMIC showed good RF performances. For example, the downconverter MMIC showed an LO leakage power of -25 dBc at IF output port, and a RF-LO isolation of 18 dB. Therefore, off-chip components such as LO rejection filters were not required for a normal operation of the proposed downconverter MMIC. The proposed downconverter MMIC showed a conversion gain of 10.3 dB at RF frequency of 63 GHz. The size of the downconverter MMIC including all active and passive components was $2.2{\times}1.4mm^2$.

• Smart Media Journal
• /
• v.4 no.2
• /
• pp.55-61
• /
• 2015

A bandwidth-enhanced ultra-wide band (UWB) CMOS balun-LNA is implemented as a part of a software defined radio (SDR) receiver which supports multi-band and multi-standard. The proposed balun-LNA is composed of a single-to-differential converter, a differential-to-single voltage summer with inductive shunt peaking, a negative feedback network, and a differential output buffer with composite common-drain (CD) and common-source (CS) amplifiers. By feeding the single-ended output of the voltage summer to the input of the LNA through a feedback network, a wideband balun-LNA exploiting negative feedback is implemented. By adopting a source follower-based inductive shunt peaking, the proposed balun-LNA achieves a wider gain bandwidth. Two LNA design examples are presented to demonstrate the usefulness of the proposed approach. The LNA I adopts the CS amplifier with a common gate common source (CGCS) balun load as the S-to-D converter for high gain and low noise figure (NF) and the LNA II uses the differential amplifier with the ac-grounded second input terminal as the S-to-D converter for high second-order input-referred intercept point (IIP2). The 3 dB gain bandwidth of the proposed balun-LNA (LNA I) is above 5 GHz and the NF is below 4 dB from 100 MHz to 5 GHz. An average power gain of 18 dB and an IIP3 of -8 ~ -2 dBm are obtained. In simulation, IIP2 of the LNA II is at least 5 dB higher than that of the LNA I with same power consumption.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Illuminating and Electrical Installation Engineers
• /
• v.22 no.6
• /
• pp.141-147
• /
• 2008

This paper describes the design of frequency down converting Mixer in the receiver to use compound semiconductor and CMOS product process. The basic theory and structure of frequency down converting Mixer is surveyed, and we design mixer circuit with active balun which use the compound semiconductor and CMOS process. This mixer convert a single ended signal to differential signal at input port of RF and LO instead of matching circuit to get dual band balanced mixer structure and characteristic broadband. This designed mixer has a conversion gain $-1{\sim}-6[dB]$ at $2{\sim}6[GHz]$ bandwidths. However, the simulation of the designed mixer with active balun has the result of a 7[dB] conversion gain for -2[dBm] LO input power and -10[dBm] input P1[dB] at 5.8[GHz].