• JSTS:Journal of Semiconductor Technology and Science
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• 제11권4호
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• pp.336-343
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• 2011

This paper introduces a simple variable gain amplifier (VGA) structure that shows an inherently dB-linear gain control property. Requiring no additional components for dB-linear control, the structure is compact and power efficient. The designed two-stage VGA shows a gain control range of 60dB with the gain error in the range of ${\pm}0.4$ dB. The power consumption including the output buffer is 20.4 mW from 1.2 V supply voltage with bandwidth of 630 MHz. The prototype was fabricated in a 0.13 ${\mu}m$ CMOS process and the VGA core occupies 0.06 $mm^2$.

• 한국통신학회논문지
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• 제31권3A호
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• pp.356-359
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• 2006

A monolithic SiGe HBT variable gain driver amplifier(VGDA) with high dB-linear gain control and high linearity has been developed as a driver amplifier with ground-shielded microstrip lines for 5-GHz transmitters. The VGDA consists of three blocks such as the cascode gain-control stage, fixed-gain output stage, and voltage control block. The circuit elements were optimized by using the Agilent Technologies' ADSs. The VGDA was implemented in STMicroelectronics' 0.35${\mu}m$ Si-BiCMOS process. The VGDA exhibits a dynamic gain control range of 34 dB with the control voltage range from 0 to 2.3 V in 5.15-5.35 GHz band. At 5.15 GHz, maximum gain and attenuation are 10.5 dB and -23.6 dB, respectively. The amplifier also produces a 1-dB gain-compression output power of -3 dBm and output third-order intercept point of 7.5 dBm. Input/output voltage standing wave ratios of the VGDA keep low and constant despite change in the gain-control voltage.

• JSTS:Journal of Semiconductor Technology and Science
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• 제14권5호
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• pp.579-587
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• 2014

This paper presents a variable gain amplifier (VGA) for an analog front-end (AFE) of ultrasound medical imaging. This VGA has a closed-loop topology and shows a 37-dB-linear characteristic with a single-stage amplifier. It consists of an op-amp, a non-binary-weighted capacitor array, and a gain-control block. This non-binary-weighted capacitor array reduces the required number of capacitors and the complexity of the gain-control block. The VGA has been fabricated in a 0.35-mm CMOS process. This work gives the largest gain range of 37 dB per stage, the largest P1 dB of 9.5 dBm at the 3.3-V among the recent VGA circuits available in the literature. The voltage gain is controlled in the range of [-10, 27] dB in a linear-in-dB scale with 16 steps by a 4-bit digital code. The VGA has a bandpass characteristic with a passband of [20 kHz, 8 MHz].

• ETRI Journal
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• 제46권4호
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• pp.708-715
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• 2024

We propose a 10-GHz 2 × 2 phased-array radio frequency (RF) receiver with an 8-bit linear phase and 15-dB gain control range using 65-nm complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor technology. An 8 × 8 phased-array receiver module is implemented using 16 2 × 2 RF phased-array integrated circuits. The receiver chip has four single-to-differential low-noise amplifier and gain-controlled phase-shifter (GCPS) channels, four channel combiners, and a 50-Ω driver. Using a novel complementary bias technique in a phase-shifting core circuit and an equivalent resistance-controlled resistor-inductor-capacitor load, the GCPS based on vector-sum structure increases the phase resolution with weighting-factor controllability, enabling the vector-sum phase-shifting circuit to require a low current and small area due to its small 1.2-V supply. The 2 × 2 phased-array RF receiver chip has a power gain of 21 dB per channel and a 5.7-dB maximum single-channel noise-figure gain. The chip shows 8-bit phase states with a 2.39° root mean-square (RMS) phase error and a 0.4-dB RMS gain error with a 15-dB gain control range for a 2.5° RMS phase error over the 10 to10.5-GHz band.

• 대한전자공학회논문지SD
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• 제48권7호
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• pp.23-29
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• 2011

본 논문에서는 GPS 수신기를 위한 dB-선형 특성이 개선된 가변 이득 증폭기 회로를 제안한다. 제안된 dB-선형 전류 발생기는 dB-선형성 오차가 ${\pm}0.15$dB 이내로 개선되었다. 개선된 dB-선형 전류 발생기를 사용하여 GPS 수신기를 위한 가변 이득 증폭기를 설계였다. GPS 수신기의 IF 주파수는 4MHz를 가정하였고, 선형성 요구조건을 도출하여 만족하기 위해 최소 이득일때 24dBm의 IIP3를 만족하도록 하였다. 가변이득 증폭기는 3단으로 구성되어 있으며 DC-오프셋 제거 루프를 통하여 회로의 오프셋 전압을 보상하였다. 설계된 가변 이득 증폭기의 이득은 -8dB~52dB의 범위를 가지며 이득의 dB-선형성은 ${\pm}0.2$dB 이내를 충족한다. 3-dB 주파수 대역폭은 이득에 따라 35MHz~106MHz를 보인다. 가변 이득 증폭기는 CMOS 0.18${\mu}m$ 공정을 이용하여 설계되었으며 전력은 1.8V 전원 전압에서 3mW를 소비한다.

• ETRI Journal
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• 제33권6호
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• pp.897-903
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• 2011

A hybrid ${\Delta}{\Sigma}$ modulator for audio applications is presented in this paper. The pulse generator for digital-to-analog converter alleviates the requirement of the external clock jitter and calibrates the coefficient variation due to a process shift and temperature changes. The input resistor network in the first integrator offers a gain control function in a dB-linear fashion. Also, careful chopper stabilization implementation using return-to-zero scheme in the first continuous-time integrator minimizes both the influence of flicker noise and inflow noise due to chopping. The chip is implemented in a 0.13 ${\mu}m$ CMOS technology (I/O devices) and occupies an active area of 0.37 $mm^2$. The ${\Delta}{\Sigma}$ modulator achieves a dynamic range (A-weighted) of 97.8 dB and a peak signal-to-noise-plus-distortion ratio of 90.0 dB over an audio bandwidth of 20 kHz with a 4.4 mW power consumption from 3.3 V. Also, the gain of the modulator is controlled from -9.5 dB to 8.5 dB, and the performance of the modulator is maintained up to 5 nsRMS external clock jitter.

• JSTS:Journal of Semiconductor Technology and Science
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• 제13권4호
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• pp.318-330
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• 2013

This paper presents a high-linearity low-noise small-size programmable gain amplifier (PGA) based on a new low-noise low-distortion differential amplifier and a proposed reconfiguration technique. The proposed differential amplifier combines an inverter-based differential pair with an adaptive biasing circuit to reduce noise and distortion. The reconfiguration technique saves the chip size by half by utilizing the same differential pair for the input transconductance and load-stage, interchangeably. Fabricated in $0.18-{\mu}m$ CMOS, the proposed PGA shows a dB-linear control range of 21dB in 16 steps from -11 dB to 10 dB with a gain error of less than ${\pm}0.33$ dB, an IIP3 of 7.4~14.5 dBm, a P1dB of -7~1.2 dBm, a noise figure of 13dB, and a 3-dB bandwidth of 270MHz at the maximum gain, respectively. The PGA occupies a chip area of $0.04mm^2$ and consumes only 1.3 mA from the 1.8 V supply.

• ETRI Journal
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• 제32권4호
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• pp.588-595
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• 2010

This paper proposes encoding and decoding for nonlinear product codes and investigates the performance of nonlinear product codes. The proposed nonlinear product codes are constructed as N-dimensional product codes where the constituent codes are nonlinear binary codes derived from the linear codes over higher order alphabets, for example, Preparata or Kerdock codes. The performance and the complexity of the proposed construction are evaluated using the well-known nonlinear Nordstrom-Robinson code, which is presented in the generalized array code format with a low complexity trellis. The proposed construction shows the additional coding gain, reduced error floor, and lower implementation complexity. The (64, 24, 12) nonlinear binary product code has an effective gain of about 2.5 dB and 1 dB gain at a BER of $10^{-6}$ when compared to the (64, 15, 16) linear product code and the (64, 24, 10) linear product code, respectively. The (256, 64, 36) nonlinear binary product code composed of two Nordstrom-Robinson codes has an effective gain of about 0.7 dB at a BER of $10^{-5}$ when compared to the (256, 64, 25) linear product code composed of two (16, 8, 5) quasi-cyclic codes.

• ETRI Journal
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• 제20권1호
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• pp.28-36
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• 1998

A simple experimental method to design gain-flattened erbium-doped fiber amplifier is proposed and demonstrated based on the two linear relations between the output power and the pump power, and between the gain and the length of the eribium-doped fiber at the gain flattened state. The spectral gain variation of the eribium-doped fiber amplifiber constructed by this method was less than 0.4 dB over 12 nm (1,545~1,557nm) wavelength region. The gain flatness is also controlled within 0.4 dB over the input power range of -30~-15dBm/ch through the feedback control utilizing the amplified spontaneous emission power in the 1,530 nm region.

• 대한전자공학회:학술대회논문집
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• 대한전자공학회 2004년도 ICEIC The International Conference on Electronics Informations and Communications
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• pp.221-224
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• 2004

This paper proposed an ultra low-power CMOS exponential voltage-mode circuit using the Pseudo-exponential function for realizing the exponential characteristics. The proposed circuit provides high dB-linear output voltage range at low-voltage applications. In a $0.25\;\mu m$ CMOS process, the simulations show more than 35 dB output voltage range and 26 dB with the linearity error less than $\pm0.5\;dB.$ The average current consumption is less than 80 uA. The proposed circuit can be used for the design of an extremely low-power variable gain amplifier (VGA) and automatic gain control (AGC).