Design of an Active N-Path Filter for 5G mm-wave Receivers

Receivers for millimeter-wave (mm-wave) 5G, with the ability to detect a low-power desired signal, in the vicinity of large power blockers, require highly linear circuitry with a large power consumption. Suppressing the out-of-band blockers reduces this power consumption. N-path filters (NPFs) have recently been used to reject interferers in...

Subsea Communication System using Quasi-Static Electric Fields: Hardware Design

As electromagnetic waves cannot propagate sufficiently far in water, underwater communication is mainly performed using either acoustics or optics. However, none of these technologies have been proven to be completely effective in every situation. Therefore, research in new underwater communication systems can still bring large benefits to a...

A Current Re-Use Quadrature RF Receiver Front-End for Low Power Applications: Blixator Circuit

This article presents the theory and implementation of a quadrature and differential RF front-end receiver. Combining balun, low-noise amplifier (LNA), mixer, and oscillator in a single stage, the proposed circuit, named the Blixator, is well suited for low-power applications. The baseband's transimpedance amplifier (TIA) also shares part of...

A 76.5-92.6 GHz CMOS LNA Using Two-Port kQ-Product Theory for Transformer Design

This letter presents a convenient approach based on the two-port kQ-product theory to analyze the influence of interwinding capacitive coupling on the efficiency of the transformer. It is demonstrated that a transformer with proper size can benefit from the interwinding capacitive coupling to maximize its efficiency at a desired frequency....

Integrated Transceivers for Emerging Medical Ultrasound Imaging Devices: A Review

As medical ultrasound imaging moves from conventional cart-based scanners to new form factors such as imaging catheters, hand-held point-of-care scanners and ultrasound patches, there is an increasing need for integrated transceivers that can be closely integrated with the transducer to provide channel-count reduction, improved signal quality...

An FM Chirp Waveform Generator and Detector for Radar: Baseband, intermediate frequency, low noise and RF power amplifiers

This report describes the design of different amplifiers that are part of an FM transceiver. This is part of a larger project, which has the objective to design a complete FM transceiver from discrete components only, meaning that IC technology is not considered. <br/>The circuits designed are two baseband amplifiers, an intermediate frequency...

Noise Measurements of a Low-Noise Amplifier in the FDM Readout System for SAFARI

The SPICA-SAFARI instrument requires extremely sensitive transition edge sensor (TES) arrays with a noise equivalent power of 2×10-19W/Hz and a readout system with an output noise that is dominated by the detector noise. It is essential to ensure the frequency domain multiplexing (FDM) readout system in SAFARI meets the noise requirement. The...

A low-noise amplifier for ultrasound imaging with continuous time-gain compensation

This work presents a low-noise amplifier (LNA) for ultrasound imaging with built-in continuous time-gain compensation (TGC), which compensates for the time-dependent attenuation of the received echo signal and thus significantly reduces its dynamic range (DR). The proposed design combines the LNA and TGC functions in a single variable-gain...

FM Transciever for Wireless Communication: RF Power Amplifier & Low Noise Amplifier

This thesis explains the design process of two subsystems of a radio transmitter and receiver. The goal of the project is to transmit audio over a distance using FM modulation. This report will focus on the power amplifier leading to the transmitting antenna and the low noise amplifier connected to the receiving antenna. A design process for a...

Cryo-CMOS Circuits and Systems for Quantum Computing Applications

A fault-tolerant quantum computer with millions of quantum bits (qubits) requires massive yet very precise control electronics for the manipulation and readout of individual qubits. CMOS operating at cryogenic temperatures down to 4 K (cryo-CMOS) allows for closer system integration, thus promising a scalable solution to enable future quantum...

Fully Integrated Discrete-Time Superheterodyne Receiver in Nano-Scale CMOS

In a radio-frequency (RF) system-on-chip (SoC), a digital baseband/application processor, which occupies most of the silicon area, determines the SoC fabrication process technology and voltage supply. The rest of the circuitry, including RF front-end and frequency synthesizer, must then adopt the chosen process technology, i.e., presently low...

A 24GHz Radar Receiver in CMOS

This thesis investigates the system design and circuit implementation of a 24GHz-band short-range radar receiver in CMOS technology. The propagation and penetration properties of EM wave offer the possibility of non-contact based remote sensing and through-the-wall imaging of distance stationary or moving objects. The feasibility of realizing...

Multi-band/Multi-Mode RF Front-end Receiver for Basestation Applications

In the last couple of years, mobile telephony has truly become global, with more than 4 billion users worldwide nowadays (compared to less than 1bn ten years ago). This has represented a boost not just for the mobile phones industry, but also for that of wireless infrastructure. Larger-scale production and increased competition have transformed...

RF Amplifier Design Techniques for Linearity and Dynamic Range

This thesis presents circuit- and device-level linearization techniques to reduce the intermodulation distortion as well as the DC power consumption in RF amplifier circuits. As a key method to accomplish the research goals presented in Chapter 1, a so-called orthogonal design approach is introduced that allows for an uncompromised optimization...