• ETRI Journal
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• v.38 no.1
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• pp.133-140
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• 2016

This paper presents a method of parasitic inductance reduction for high-speed switching and high-efficiency operation of a cascode structure with a low-voltage enhancement-mode silicon (Si) metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) and a high-voltage depletion-mode gallium nitride (GaN) fielde-ffect transistor (FET). The method is proposed to add a bonding wire interconnected between the source electrode of the Si MOSFET and the gate electrode of the GaN FET in a conventional cascode structure package to reduce the most critical inductance, which provides the major switching loss for a high switching speed and high efficiency. From the measured results of the proposed and conventional GaN cascode FETs, the rising and falling times of the proposed GaN cascode FET were up to 3.4% and 8.0% faster than those of the conventional GaN cascode FET, respectively, under measurement conditions of 30 V and 5 A. During the rising and falling times, the energy losses of the proposed GaN cascode FET were up to 0.3% and 6.7% lower than those of the conventional GaN cascode FET, respectively.

• Journal of electromagnetic engineering and science
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.12-16
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• 2003

In this paper, low noise amplifiers with coplanar waveguide structure are presented for Wireless LAN data communication application. For comparison of microwave performance, LNAs of cascode type and balanced type using cascode cell with the same substrate and same bias conditions are designed and implemented. A cascode type of LNA shows the gain of 12.45 ㏈, input return loss of 11.63 ㏈, and noise figure of 1.52㏈. A balanced type of LNA using cascode cell shows the gain of 6.58 ㏈, input return loss of 16.6 ㏈, and noise figure of 1.18 ㏈.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.22 no.7
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• pp.993-1000
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• 2018

This paper proposes a low-dropout voltage regulator(LDO) using self-cascode structure. The self-cascode structure was optimized by adjusting the channel length of the source-side MOSFET and applying a forward voltage to the body of the drain-side MOSFET. The self-cascode of the input differential stage of the error amplifier is optimized to give higher transconductance, but the self-cascode of the output stage is optimized to give higher output resistance, The proposed LDO using self-cascode structure was designed by a $0.18{\mu}m$ CMOS technology and simulated using SPECTRE. The load regulation of the proposed LDO regulator was 0.03V/A, whereas that of the conventional LDO was 0.29V/A. The line regulation of the proposed LDO regulator was 2.23mV/V, which is approximately three times improvement compared to that of the conventional LDO. The transient response of the proposed LDO regulator was 625ns, which is 346ns faster than that of the conventional LDO.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.720-725
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• 2015

This paper describes the design of a wideband cascode amplifier using a feedback network and microwave small-signal transistors. The adopted cascode structure enables the miller effect to be lessened, cutoff frequency to increase, and reduction of gain in the mid-band to be mitigated. In addition, a feedback network is added to the cascode structure to improve the input matching and ripple performances over the wide operating band. The designed cascode amplifier contains a feedback network for small size and broadband amplification, whereas balanced amplifiers and distributed amplifiers have been used widely. The measurement shows $8.5dB{\pm}1.5dB$ of gain over 1000-2000MHz. The fabricated cascode amplifier has more than 8dB of gain over a 1000MHz bandwidth with a good flatness. The measured performances agree with the predicted ones even a minor shift in operating frequency is observed.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 1995.07c
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• pp.1108-1110
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• 1995

This paper presents a balanced CMOS complementary folded cascode OP-AMP topology that achieves improved DC gain using the gain boosting technique, a high unity-gain frequency and improved slew rate using the CMOS complementary cascode structure and a high PSRR using the balanced output stage. Bode-plot measurements of a balanced CMOS complementary folded cascode OP-AMP show a DC gain of 80dB, a unity-gain frequency of 110MHz and a slew rate of $274V/{\mu}s$(1pF load). This balanced CMOS complementary folded cascode OP-AMP is well suited for high frequency analog signal processing applications.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.26 no.8
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• pp.575-581
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• 2013

The self-cascode (SC) structure has low output voltage swing and high output resistance. In order to implement a simple and better SC structure, the native-$V_{th}$ MOSFETs which has low threshold voltage($V_{th}$) is applied. The proposed SC structure is designed using a qualified industry standard $0.18-{\mu}m$ CMOS technology. Measurement results show that the proposed SC structure has higher transconductance as well as output resistance than single MOSFET. In addition, analog building blocks (e.g. current mirror, basic amplifier circuits) with the proposed SC structure are investigated using by Cadence Spectre simulator. Simulation results show improved electrical performances.

• 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 $75{\mu}m{\times}90{\mu}m$.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Electromagnetic Engineering and Science
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• v.28 no.6
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• pp.435-443
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• 2017

In this study, we analyzed the effects of the common-gate transistor bias of a switching mode CMOS power amplifier. Although the most earier works occured on the transistor sizes of the cascode structure, we showed that the gate bias of the common-gate transistor also influences the overall efficiency of the power amplifier. To investigate the effect of the gate bias, we analyzed the DC power consumption according to the gate bias and hence the efficiency of the power amplifier. From the analyzed results, the optimized gate bias for the maximum efficiency is lower than the supply voltage of the power amplifier. We also found that an excessively low gate bias may degrade the output power and efficiency owing to the effects of the on-resistance of the cascode structure. To verify the analyzed results, we designed a 1.9 GHz switching mode power amplifier using $0.18{\mu}m$ RF CMOS technology. As predicted in the analysis, the maximum efficiency is obtained at 2.5 V, while the supply voltage of power amplifier is 3.3 V. The measured maximum efficiency is 31.5 % with an output power of 29.1 dBm. From the measureed results, we successfully verified the analysis.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Power Electronics
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• v.20 no.6
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• pp.558-565
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• 2015

Gallium nitride high-electron mobility transistor (GaN HEMT) is the strongest candidate for replacing Si MOSFET. Comparing the figure of merit (FOM) of GaN with the state-of-the-art super junction Si MOSFET, the FOM is much better because of the wide band gap characteristics and the heterojunction structure. Although GaN HEMT has many benefits for the power conversion system, the performance of the power conversion system with the GaN HEMT is sensitive because of its low threshold voltage ($V_{th}$) and even lower parasitic capacitance. This study examines the characteristics of a phase-shifted full-bridge dc-dc converter with cascode GaN HEMT. The problem of unoptimized dead time is analyzed on the basis of the output capacitance of GaN HEMT. In addition, the printed circuit board (PCB) layout consideration is analyzed to reduce the negative effects of parasitic inductance. A comparison of the experimental results is provided to validate the dead time and PCB layout analysis for a phase-shifted full-bridge dc-dc converter with cascode GaN HEMT.

• The Journal of the Korea institute of electronic communication sciences
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• v.8 no.10
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• pp.1477-1483
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• 2013

This paper proposes a low-voltage current-mode integrator for a continuous-time current-mode baseband channel selection filter. The low-voltage current-mode linear cascode integrator is introduced to offer advantages of high current gain and improved unity-gain frequency. The proposed current-mode integrator has fully differential input and output structure consisting of CMOS complementary circuit. Additional cascode transistors which are operated in linear region are inserted for bias to achieve the low-voltage feature. Frequency range is also controllable by selecting proper bias voltage. From simulation results, it can be noticed that the implemented integrator achieves design specification such as low-voltage operation, current gain, and unity gain frequency.