Ying-Zong Juang

A Compact Wideband CMOS Low-Noise Amplifier Using Shunt Resistive-Feedback and Series Inductive-Peaking Techniques

A wideband low-noise amplifier (LNA) with shunt resistive-feedback and series inductive-peaking is proposed for wideband input matching, broadband power gain and flat noise figure (NF) response. The proposed wideband LNA is implemented in 0.18-mum CMOS technology. Measured results show that power gain is greater than 10 dB and input return loss is below -10 dB from 2 to 11.5 GHz. The IIP3 is about +3 dBm, and the NF ranges from 3.1 to 4.1 dB over the band of interest. An excellent agreement between the simulated and measured results is found and attributed to less number of passive components needed in this circuit compared with previous designs. Besides, the ratio of figure-of- merit to chip size is as high as 190 (mW-1 /mm2 ) which is the best results among all previous reported CMOS-based wideband LNA.

A CMOS wireless biomolecular sensing system-on-chip based on polysilicon nanowire technology

As developments of modern societies, an on-field and personalized diagnosis has become important for disease prevention and proper treatment. To address this need, in this work, a polysilicon nanowire (poly-Si NW) based biosensor system-on-chip (bio-SSoC) is designed and fabricated by a 0.35 μm 2-Poly-4-Metal (2P4M) complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) process provided by a commercialized semiconductor foundry. Because of the advantages of CMOS system-on-chip (SoC) technologies, the poly-Si NW biosensor is integrated with a chopper differential-difference amplifier (DDA) based analog-front-end (AFE), a successive approximation analog-to-digital converter (SAR ADC), and a microcontroller to have better sensing capabilities than a traditional Si NW discrete measuring system. In addition, an on-off key (OOK) wireless transceiver is also integrated to form a wireless bio-SSoC technology. This is pioneering work to harness the momentum of CMOS integrated technology into emerging bio-diagnosis technologies. This integrated technology is experimentally examined to have a label-free and low-concentration biomolecular detection for both Hepatitis B Virus DNA (10 fM) and cardiac troponin I protein (3.2 pM). Based on this work, the implemented wireless bio-SSoC has demonstrated a good biomolecular sensing characteristic and a potential for low-cost and mobile applications. As a consequence, this developed technology can be a promising candidate for on-field and personalized applications in biomedical diagnosis.

A 0.6 V, 4.32 mW, 68 GHz Low Phase-Noise VCO With Intrinsic-Tuned Technique in 0.13

An intrinsic-tuned, 68 GHz voltage controlled oscillator (VCO) without an extra on-chip accumulation-mode metal oxide semiconductor (MOS)-varactor is demonstrated in a standard, 0.13 mum CMOS technology. This VCO exhibits phase noises of -98.4 dBc/Hz and -115.2 dBc/Hz at 1 and 10 MHz offset, respectively, along with a tuning range of 4.5 % even under a small power consumption of 4.32 mW. Besides, the highest figure-of-merit (taking frequency tuning range into account) of -182 dBc/Hz under the 1 MHz offset condition is achieved among all previously reported >60 GHz CMOS-based VCOs, which is attributed to the proposed intrinsic tuning mechanism.

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The availability of unlicensed mm-wave bands has fueled the research and development of mm-wave wireless systems. If different frequency bands can be operated from one signal source, it will reduce the circuit size and power consumption, leading to compact systems. For example, the frequencies 38, 57, 76GHz in 38, 60 and 77GHz bands can be generated by using only one PLL, as illustrated in Fig. 16.4.1. To address this requirement, in this paper, a multiband multimode injection-locked frequency divider (M-ILFD) is presented that meets the requirements for 38 and 57GHz applications.

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A 30-GHz wide locking-range (25%) injection-locked frequency divider (ILFD) with small power consumption (1.86 mW) is presented. The locking range of the ILFD is extended by reducing the quality factor of resonant tank. Besides, the output power level of second harmonic is lower than that of fundamental component by 37 dBc due to the new output buffer where the second harmonic can be cancelled. The proposed wideband ILFD is implemented in 0.13-mum standard CMOS process. It achieves a wide locking-range of 6.2 GHz (25 %) without any frequency tuning mechanism under the small power consumption of 1.86 mW and the highest figure-of-merit of 12.4 (%/mW) among all reported state-of-the-art CMOS ILFD.

A mm-wave CMOS multimode frequency divider

A complete CMOS wideband low noise amplifier (LNA) has been designed with off-chip passive device. The input inductor with integrated passive device (IPD) is used for input matching and NF improvement due to its high quality factor (Q). The large inductance of 4.7 nH of choke is used for covering the bandwidth of 2∼11 GHz, which is stacked on the top of CMOS for chip-area saving. Besides, the interaction between CMOS and IPD for passive devices is also considered in the work. The CMOS wideband LNA is with the merits of cost-effective and high-performance compared to the pure CMOS circuit.

A 30-GHz Wideband Low-Power CMOS Injection-Locked Frequency Divider for 60-GHz Wireless-LAN

This paper presents a highly-integrated DNA detection SoC, where several kinds of cantilever DNA sensors, a readout circuit, an MCU, voltage regulators, and a wireless transceiver, are integrated monolithically in a 0.35 μm CMOS Bio-MEMS process. The cantilever-based biosensors with embedded piezoresistors aim to transduce DNA hybridization into resistance variation without cumbersome labeling process. To improve detection sensitivity for low DNA concentration use, an oscillator-based self-calibrated readout circuit with high precision is proposed to convert small resistance variation ( of original resistance) of the sensor into adequate frequency variation and further into digital data. Moreover, its wireless capacity enables isolation of the sample solution from electrical wire lines and facilitates data transmission. To demonstrate the effectiveness of full system, it is applied to detect hepatitis B virus (HBV) DNA. The experimental results show that it has the capability to distinguish between one base-pair (1-bp) mismatch DNAs and match DNAs and achieves a limit of detection (LOD) of less than 1 pM.

CMOS wideband LNA design using integrated passive device

A 9-GHz quadrature voltage-controlled oscillator (QVCO) with an improvement of 1/f noise performance due to the use of proposed source-follower coupling technique is presented. In contrast to conventional parallel or series coupling methods by which the coupling transistors are operated in saturation region, the source-follower coupling technique, which uses a coupling transistor operated in cut-off region, is invented. Therefore, 1/f noise is much lower than that of the conventional topologies due to the less turn-on duty cycle of the coupling-transistor than that of conventional one, which in turns results in smaller phase noise. It is found experimentally that the phase noise of the QVCO can be reduced by more than 8 dB due to the suppression the 1/f noise of coupling transistor by changing its operation condition from saturation to cut-off region. This QVCO achieves a phase noise of -115 dBc/Hz at 1-MHz-offset away from the 9.17 GHz carrier, corresponding to a figure-of-merit (FOM) of -183.4 dBc/Hz.

A CMOS Cantilever-Based Label-Free DNA SoC With Improved Sensitivity for Hepatitis B Virus Detection

Polysilicon nanowire (poly-Si NW) based biosensor is integrated with the wireless acquisition circuits in a standard CMOS SoC for the first time. To improve detection quality, a chopper DDA-based analog front-end with features of low noise, high CMRR, and rail-to-rail input range is implemented. Additional temperature sensor is also included to compensate temperature drift of the biosensor. The results indicate that the detection limit is as low as 10fM. The capability to distinguish one base-pair mismatched DNAs is also demonstrated.

A Low Phase-Noise 9-GHz CMOS Quadrature-VCO using Novel Source-Follower Coupling Technique

This paper reports on a sensing mechanism created by converting a change in solid–liquid interfacial tension due to molecular interactions into a change in capillary force loading for a cantilever sensor design. Compared with former cantilever sensor designs based on surface stress measurement, the proposed mechanism takes advantage of capillary force to effectively amplify the signal output of the sensor by several orders of magnitude. A complementary-metal-oxide-semiconductor-based cantilever sensor design validates the proposed sensing mechanism. Detection of Biotin-NeutrAvidin specific binding in picomolar sample concentrations was demonstrated for the application of biochemical assay.