S. Donnay

Ultra-wide-band transmitter for low-power wireless body area networks: design and evaluation

The successful realization of a wireless body area network (WBAN) requires innovative solutions to meet the energy consumption budget of the autonomous sensor nodes. The radio interface is a major challenge, since its power consumption must be reduced below 100 /spl mu/W (energy scavenging limit). The emerging ultra-wide-band (UWB) technology shows strong advantages in reaching this target. First, most of the complexity of an UWB system is in the receiver, which is a perfect scenario in the WBAN context. Second, the very little hardware complexity of a UWB transmitter offers the potential for low-cost and highly integrated solutions. Finally, in a pulse-based UWB scheme, the transmitter can be duty-cycled at the pulse rate, thereby reducing the baseline power consumption. We present a low-power UWB transmitter that can be fully integrated in standard CMOS technology. Measured performances of a fully integrated pulse generator are provided, showing the potential of UWB for low power and low cost implementations. Finally, using a WBAN channel model, we present a comparison between our UWB solution and state-of-the-art low-power narrow-band implementations. This paper shows that UWB performs better in the short range due to a reduced baseline power consumption.

Compensation of IQ imbalance and phase noise in OFDM systems

Nowadays, a lot of effort is spent on developing inexpensive orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) receivers. Especially, zero intermediate frequency (zero-IF) receivers are very appealing, because they avoid costly IF filters. However, zero-IF front-ends also introduce significant additional front-end distortion, such as IQ imbalance. Moreover, zero-IF does not solve the phase noise problem. Unfortunately, OFDM is very sensitive to the receiver nonidealities IQ imbalance and phase noise. Therefore, we developed a new estimation/compensation scheme to jointly combat the IQ imbalance and phase noise at baseband. In this letter, we describe the algorithms and present the performance results. Our compensation scheme eliminates the IQ imbalance based on one OFDM symbol and performs well in the presence of phase noise. The compensation scheme has a fast convergence and a small residual degradation: even for large IQ imbalance, the overall system performance for an OFDM-wireless local area network (WLAN) case study is within 0.6 dB of the optimal case. As such, our approach greatly relaxes the mismatch specifications and thus enables low-cost zero-IF receivers.

Joint compensation of IQ imbalance and frequency offset in OFDM systems

Zero-IF receivers are gaining interest because they enable low-cost WLAN OFDM terminals. However, zero-IF receivers introduce IQ imbalance which may have a huge impact on performance. Rather than increasing component cost to decrease the IQ imbalance, an alternative is to tolerate the IQ imbalance and compensate it digitally. Current solutions converge too slowly for bursty WLAN communication. Moreover, the tremendous impact of a frequency offset on the IQ estimation/compensation problem is not considered. We analyze joint IQ-CFO estimation/compensation and propose a low-cost, highly effective compensation scheme. For large IQ imbalance (/spl epsi/=10%, /spl Delta//spl phi/=10/spl deg/) and large frequency offset, our solution results in an average remaining degradation below 0.5 dB compared to the reference case without IQ imbalance or frequency offset. It therefore enables the design of low-cost, low-complexity WLAN OFDM receivers.

A 0.16pJ/Conversion-Step 2.5mW 1.25GS/s 4b ADC in a 90nm Digital CMOS Process

A high-speed 4b flash ADC in 90nm digital CMOS is presented that uses a dynamic offset-compensation scheme in its comparators. It achieves a sampling rate of 1.25GS/s with 3.7 ENOB (23.8dB SNDR) from dc to Nyquist while consuming 2.5mW. It has an energy per conversion step of 0.16pJ

Analysis and experimental verification of digital substrate noise generation for epi-type substrates

Substrate coupling in mixed-signal ICs can cause important performance degradation of the analog circuits. Accurate simulation is therefore needed to investigate the generation, propagation, and impact of substrate noise. Recent studies were limited to the time-domain behavior of generated substrate noise and to noise injection from a single noise source. This paper focuses on substrate noise generation by digital circuits and on the spectral content of this noise. To simulate the noise generation, a SPICE substrate model for heavily doped epi-type substrates has been used. The accuracy of this model has been verified with measurements of substrate noise, using a wide-band, continuous-time substrate noise sensor, which allows accurate measurement of the spectral content of substrate noise. The substrate noise generation of digital circuits is analyzed, both in the time and frequency domain, and the influence of the different substrate noise coupling mechanisms is demonstrated. It is shown that substrate noise voltages up to 20 mV are generated and that, in the frequency band up to 1 GHz, noise peaks are generated at multiples of the clock and repetition frequency. These noise signals will strongly deteriorate the behavior of small signal analog amplifiers, as used in integrated front-ends.

Substrate noise generation in complex digital systems: efficient modeling and simulation methodology and experimental verification

More and more system-on-chip designs require the integration of analog circuits on large digital chips and therefore suffer from substrate noise coupling. To investigate the impact of substrate noise on the analog circuits, information is needed about digital substrate noise generation. A methodology for modelling and simulating the time-domain waveform of the generated substrate noise of large digital circuits is verified with measurements on an 86k-gate CMOS ASIC. The difference between simulated and measured substrate noise RMS voltage is <10% and simulation time is of the same order of magnitude as a gate-level VHDL simulation. For smaller circuits, e.g., a 1k-gate multiplier, a speedup in simulation time of 3 orders of magnitude is obtained with respect to a full SPICE simulation.

A mixed-signal design roadmap

The article presents a roadmap for the 2001 International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors. It uses performance figures of merit (FoMs) derived from basic circuits critical to mixed-signal design performance. Extrapolations from the FoMs to future performance values establish the device parameters necessary for design progress.

Planar Bulk MOSFET s Versus FinFETs: An Analog/RF Perspective

Comparison of digital and analog figures-of-merit of FinFETs and planar bulk MOSFETs reveals an interesting tradeoff in the analog/RF design space. It is found that FinFETs possess the following key advantages over bulk MOSFETs: reduced leakage, excellent subthreshold slope, and better voltage gain without degradation of noise or linearity. This makes them attractive for digital and low-frequency RF applications around 5 GHz, where the performance-power tradeoff is important. On the other hand, in high-frequency applications, planar bulk MOSFETs are seen to hold the advantage over FinFETs due to their higher peak transconductance. However, this comes at a cost of a reduced voltage gain of bulk MOSFETs

Compensation of IQ imbalance in OFDM systems

Today a lot of attention is spent on developing inexpensive OFDM receivers. Especially, zero-IF receivers are very appealing, because they avoid costly IF filters. However, this implies IQ demodulation at RF, which therefore cannot be done digitally and thus introduces IQ mismatch. Unfortunately, OFDM is very sensitive to receiver IQ imbalance. Therefore, we developed a new compensation scheme to combat the IQ imbalance at baseband. In this paper, we describe the algorithm and represent the performance results. Our compensation scheme eliminates the IQ imbalance almost perfect. This leads to tremendous improvements, especially in multi-path channels (up to 10 dB performance gain), and enables low-cost zero-IF receivers.

Methodology and experimental verification for substrate noise reduction in CMOS mixed-signal ICs with synchronous digital circuits

An efficient substrate-noise-reduction technique for synchronous CMOS circuits shows >2/spl times/ noise reduction with penalties of 3% area and 4% power increase in a 5k-gate synchronous CMOS circuit fabricated in a 0.35 /spl mu/m CMOS process on an epi-type substrate.