• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.120-124
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• 2022

With advancements in underwater stealth technology for naval vessels, new sensor configurations for detecting targets have been attracting increased attention. Latest underwater mines adopt multiple sensor configurations that include electric field sensors to detect targets and to help acquire accurate ignition time. An underwater electric field sensor consists of a pair of electrodes, signal processing unit, and preamplifier. For detecting underwater electric fields, the preamplifier requires low-noise amplification at ultra-low frequency bands. In this paper, the specific requirements for low-noise preamplifiers are discussed along with the experimental results of various setups of matched transistors and chopper stabilized operational amplifiers. The results showed that noise characteristics at ultra-low frequency bands were affected significantly by the voltage noise density of the chopper amplifier and the number of matched transistors used for differential amplification. The fabricated preamplifier was operated within normal design parameters, which was verified by testing its gain, phase, and linearity.

• Current Optics and Photonics
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.32-38
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• 2022

Erbium-doped fiber amplifiers (EDFAs) have saturated the technological market but are still widely used in high-speed and long-distance communication systems. To overcome EDFA saturation and limitations, its erbium-doped fiber is co-doped with other materials such as zirconia and bismuth. This article demonstrates and compares the performance using three different fibers as the gain medium for zirconia-erbium-doped fibers (Zr-EDF), bismuth-erbium-doped fibers (Bi-EDF), and commercial silica-erbium-doped fibers (Si- EDF). The optical amplifier was configured with a double-pass amplification system, with a broadband mirror at the end of its configuration to allow double-pass operation in the system. The important parameters in amplifiers such as optical properties, optical amplification and noise values were also examined and discussed. All three fibers were 0.5 m long and entered with different input signals: 30 dBm for low input and 10 dBm for high input. Zr-EDF turned out to be the most relevant optical amplifier as it had the highest optical gain, longest transmission distance, highest average flatness gain with minimal jitter, and relevant noise figures suitable for the latest communication technology.

• Journal of IKEEE
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.53-58
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• 2023

In this paper, a Radio Frequency (RF) transformer (TF) based on LTCC (Low Temperature Co-fired Ceramic) for the output stage of differential power amplifiers is presented. Instead of using an usual L-C matching circuit, a small-sized transformer was implemented on the LTCC board and the results were verified through simulation. For reduced size and better performance, a TF using more metal layers was implemented and compared with the existing TF through simulation. As a result of comparison, the proposed TF has an area reduced by 55% and a coupling coefficient increased by 25%, and insertion loss improvement of about 0.4dB at 5GHz was confirmed.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.56 no.4
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• pp.1532-1537
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• 2024

Time-of-flight (TOF) PET detectors with fast-rise-time scintillators and fast-single photon time resolution silicon photomultiplier (SiPM) have been developed to improve the coincidence timing resolution (CTR) to sub-100 ps. The CTR can be further improved with an optimal bandwidth and minimized electronic noise in the readout circuit and this helps reduce the distortion of the fast signals generated from the TOF-PET detector. The purpose of this study was to develop an ultra-high frequency and fully-differential (UF-FD) readout circuit that minimizes distortion in the fast signals produced using TOF-PET detectors, and suppresses the impact of the electronic noise generated from the detector and front-end readout circuits. The proposed UF-FD readout circuit is composed of two differential amplifiers (time) and a current feedback operational amplifier (energy). The ultra-high frequency differential (7 GHz) amplifiers can reduce the common ground noise in the fully-differential mode and minimize the distortion in the fast signal. The CTR and energy resolution were measured to evaluate the performance of the UF-FD readout circuit. These results were compared with those obtained from a high-frequency and single ended readout circuit. The experiment results indicated that the UF-FD readout circuit proposed in this study could substantially improve the best achievable CTR of TOF-PET detectors.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SD
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• v.45 no.4
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• pp.1-6
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• 2008

In this paper, millimeter-wave broadband MHEMT (Metamorphic High Electron Mobility Transistor) cascode amplifiers were designed and fabricated. The $0.1{\mu}m$ InGaAs/InAlAs/GaAs MHEMT was fabricated for cascode amplifiers. The DC characteristics of MHEMT are 670 mA/mm of drain current density, 588 mS/mm of maximum transconductance. The current gain cut-off frequency($f_T$) is 139 GHz and the maximum oscillation frequency($f_{max}$) is 266 GHz. To prevent oscillation of the designed cascode amplifiers, a parallel resistor and capacitor were connected to the drain of common gate device. By using the CPW (Coplanar Waveguide) transmission line, the cascode amplifier was designed and matched for the broadband characteristics. The designed amplifier was fabricated by the MHEMT MMIC process that was developed through this research. As the results of measurement, the amplifier was obtained 3 dB bandwidth of 50.37 GHz between 20.76 to 71.13 GHz. Also, this amplifier represents the S21 gain with the average 7.07 dB gain in bandwidth and the maximum gain of 10.3 dB at 30 GHz.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Electromagnetic Engineering and Science
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• v.14 no.9
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• pp.904-911
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• 2003

A new method to reduce the size of microwave amplifiers spiral-shaped defected ground structure(Spiral-DGS) is proposed. A microstrip line having Spiral-DGS on the ground plane produces increased slow-wave factor and electrical length for the fixed physical length. In addition, it provides an excellent rejection characteristic for a finite frequency band like band rejection filters. The rejection band is used for rejecting harmonic components of amplifiers. The reduced microstrip line lengths in matching networks by Spiral-DGS are 39 % and 44 % of the original ones in input and output matching networks, respectively. It is shown that the measured S-parameters of the reduced amplifier agree well with those of the original amplifier. The measured second harmonic of the reduced amplifier is much less than that of the original amplifier by at least 10 dB. The same technique is applied to reject the third harmonic using the proper Spiral-DGS for the third harmonic frequency. The measured third harmonic is smaller than that of the original amplifier by 25 dB.

• Journal of Korea Society of Industrial Information Systems
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.61-70
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• 2016

This paper describes a new PMU(parametric measurement unit) design technique for automatic test equipment(ATE). Only one DDA(differential difference amplifier) is used to force the test signals to DUT(device under test), while conventional design uses two or more amplifiers to force test signals. Since the proposed technique does not need extra amplifiers in feedback path, the proposed PMU inherently guarantees stable operation. Moreover, to measure the response signals from DUT, proposed technique also adopted only one DDA amplifier as an IA(instrument amplifier), while conventional IA uses 3 amplifiers and several resistors. The DDA adopted two rail-to-rail differential input stages to handle full-range differential signals. Gain enhancement technique is used in folded-cascode type DDA to get open loop gain of 100 dB. Proposed PMU design enables accurate and stable operation with smaller hardware and lower power consumption. This PMU is implemented with 0.18 um CMOS process and supply voltage is 1.8 V. Input ranges for each force mode are 0.25~1.55 V at voltage force and 0.9~0.935 V at current force mode.

• Journal of electromagnetic engineering and science
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.16-26
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• 2011

This paper presents high power and high efficiency Doherty amplifiers for 2.345 GHz wireless broadband (WiBro) applications that use a Nitronex 125-W ($P_{3dB}$) GaN high electron mobility transistor (HEMT). Two- and three-way Doherty amplifiers and a saturated Doherty amplifier using Class-F circuitry are implemented. The measured result for a center frequency of 2.345 GHz shows that the two-way Doherty amplifier attains a high $P_{3dB}$ of 51.5 dBm, a gain of 12.5 dB, and a power-added efficiency (PAE) improvement of about 16 % compared to a single class AB amplifier at 6-dB back-off power region from $P_{3dB}$. For a WiBro OFDMA signal, the Doherty amplifier provides an adjacent channel leakage ratio (ACLR) at 4.77 MHz offset that is -33 dBc at an output power of 42 dBm, which is a 9.5 dB back-off power region from $P_{3dB}$. By employing a digital pre-distortion (DPD) technique, the ACLR of the Doherty amplifier is improved from -33 dBc to -48 dBc. The measured result for the same frequency shows that the three-way Doherty amplifier, which has a $P_{3dB}$ of 53.16 dBm and a gain of 10.3 dB, and the saturated Doherty amplifier, which has a $P_{3dB}$ of 51.1 dBm and a gain of 10.3 dB, provide a PAE improvement of 11 % at the 9-dB back-off power region and 7.5 % at the 6-dB back-off region, respectively, compared to the two-way Doherty amplifier.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SD
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• v.44 no.9
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• pp.18-24
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• 2007

We report broadband cascode amplifiers of a single-ended and a balanced amplifier for the millimeter-wave applications. The amplifiers were fabricated using 0.1 ${\mu}m\;{\Gamma}-gate$ PHEMT technology on GaAs substrate. The single-ended cascode amplifier was designed and fabricated by using shunt peaking technology. The fabricated single-ended cascode amplifier shows 3 dB bandwidth of 37 GHz($18.5{\sim}55.5$ GHz) and the maximum $S_{21}$ gain of 9.38 dB. The balanced cascode amplifier using tandem couplers achieves 3 dB bandwidth and the maximum $S_{21}$ gain of 44.5 GHz($21{\sim}65.5$ GHz) and 10.4 dB at 60 GHz, respectively. The 3 dB bandwidth of the balanced cascode amplifier shows 20% lager than the single-ended cascode amplifier.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.16 no.9
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• pp.6247-6253
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• 2015

This paper presents the transient-response improved LDO regulator based on parallel error amplifiers. The proposed LDO regulator consists of an error amplifier (E/A1) which has a high gain and narrow bandwidth and a second amplifier (E/A2) which has low gain and wide bandwidth. These amplifiers are in parallel structure. Also, to improve the transient-response properties and slew-rate, some circuit block is added. Using pole-splitting technique, an external capacitor is reduced in a small on-chip size which is suitable for mobile devices. The proposed LDO has been designed and simulated using a Megna/Hynix $0.18{\mu}m$ CMOS parameters. Chip layout size is $500{\mu}m{\times}150{\mu}m$. Simulation results show 2.5 V output voltage and 100 mA load current in an input condition of 2.7 V ~ 3.3 V. Regulation Characteristic presents voltage variation of 26.1 mV and settling time of 510 ns from 100mA to 0 mA. Also, the proposed circuit has been shown voltage variation of 42.8 mV and settling time of 408 ns from 0 mA to 100 mA.