This tutorial presents an overview of the technological advances in millimeter-wave (mm-wave) circuit components, antennas, and propagation that will soon allow 60-GHz transceivers to provide multigigabit per second (multi-Gb/s) wireless communication data transfers in the consumer marketplace. Our goal is to help engineers understand the convergence of communications, circuits, and antennas, as the emerging world of subterahertz and terahertz wireless communications will require understanding at the intersections of these areas. This paper covers trends and recent accomplishments in a wide range of circuits and systems topics that must be understood to create massively broadband wireless communication systems of the future. In this paper, we present some evolving applications of massively broadband wireless communications, and use tables and graphs to show research progress from the literature on various radio system components, including on-chip and in-package antennas, radio-frequency (RF) power amplifiers (PAs), low-noise amplifiers (LNAs), voltage-controlled oscillators (VCOs), mixers, and analog-to-digital converters (ADCs). We focus primarily on silicon-based technologies, as these provide the best means of implementing very low-cost, highly integrated 60-GHz mm-wave circuits. In addition, the paper illuminates characterization techniques that are required to competently design and fabricate mm-wave devices in silicon, and illustrates effects of the 60-GHz RF propagation channel for both in-building and outdoor use. The paper concludes with an overview of the standardization and commercialization efforts for 60-GHz multi-Gb/s devices, and presents a novel way to compare the data rate versus power efficiency for future broadband devices.

http://faculty.poly.edu/~tsr/wp-content/uploads/publications/abstract17.pdf

State of the Art in 60-GHz Integrated Circuits and Systems for Wireless Communications

The tuning curve of an LC-tuned voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) substantially deviates from the ideal curve 1//spl radic/(LC(V)) when a varactor with an abrupt C(V) characteristic is adopted and the full oscillator swing is applied directly across the varactor. The tuning curve becomes strongly dependent on the oscillator bias current. As a result, the practical tuning range is reduced and the upconverted flicker noise of the bias current dominates the 1/f/sup 3/ close-in phase noise, even if the waveform symmetry has been assured. A first-order estimation of the tuning curve for MOS-varactor-tuned VCOs is provided. Based on this result, a simplified phase-noise model for double cross-coupled VCOs is derived. This model can be easily adapted to cover other LC-tuned oscillator topologies. The theoretical analyses are experimentally validated with a 0.25 /spl mu/m CMOS fully integrated VCO for 5 GHz wireless LAN receivers. By eliminating the bias current generator in a second oscillator, the close-in phase noise improves by 10 dB and features -70 dBc/Hz at 10 kHz offset. The 1/f/sup 2/ noise is -132 dBc/Hz at 3 MHz offset. The tuning range spans from 4.6 to 5.7 GHz (21%) and the current consumption is 2.9 mA.

Frequency dependence on bias current in 5 GHz CMOS VCOs: impact on tuning range and flicker noise upconversion

A limiting amplifier incorporates active feedback, inductive peaking, and negative Miller capacitance to achieve a voltage gain of 50 dB, a bandwidth of 9.4 GHz, and a sensitivity of 4.6 mV/sub pp/ for a bit-error rate of 10/sup -12/ while consuming 150 mW. A driver employs T-coil peaking and negative impedance conversion to achieve operation at 10 Gb/s while delivering a current of 100 mA to 25-/spl Omega/ lasers or a voltage swing of 2 V/sub pp/ to 50-/spl Omega/ modulators with a power dissipation of 675 mW. Fabricated in 0.18-/spl mu/m CMOS technology, both prototypes operate with a 1.8-V supply.

/pdf/10-gb-s-limiting-amplifier-and-laser-modulator-driver-in-0-2im89iwg2y.pdf

10-Gb/s limiting amplifier and laser/modulator driver in 0.18-/spl mu/m CMOS technology

A switch, switched architecture and process for transferring data through an FCAL switch is disclosed. The switch uses multiple switch control circuits each coupled to one FCAL network and all connected to a crossbar switch. The switch control circuits are coupled together by a protocol bus for coordination purposes. Local conversations can occur on each FCAL loop and crossing conversations through the switch can occur concurrently. The OPN primitive is used to establish the connection before any data is transferred thereby eliminating the need for buffer memory in the switch control circuits. The destination address of each OPN is used to address a lookup table in each switch control circuit to determine if the destination node is local. If not, the destination is looked up and a connection request made on the protocol bus. If the remote port is not busy, it sends a reply which causes both ports to establish a data path through the backplane crossbar switch.

Fibre channel arbitrated loop bufferless switch circuitry to increase bandwidth without significant increase in cost

Techniques for multiplexing and transmitting multiple data streams are described. Transmission of the multiple data streams occurs in “super-frames”. Each super-frame has a predetermined time duration and is further divided into multiple (e.g., four) frames. Each data block for each data stream is outer encoded to generate a corresponding code block. Each code block is partitioned into multiple subblocks, and each data packet in each code block is inner encoded and modulated to generate modulation symbols for the packet. The multiple subblocks for each code block are transmitted in the multiple frames of the same super-frame, one subblock per frame. Each data stream is allocated a number of transmission units in each super-frame and is assigned specific transmission units to achieve efficient packing. A wireless device can select and receive individual data streams.

Multiplexing and transmission of multiple data streams in a wireless multi-carrier communication system

A 16-b 2.5-MHz output-rate analog-to-digital converter (ADC) for wireline communications and high-speed instrumentation has been developed. A 2-1-1 cascaded delta-sigma modulator (DSM) employing 4-b quantizers in every stage makes all quantization noise sources negligible at 8/spl times/ oversampling ratio, Data weighted averaging with bi-directional rotation eliminates tones generated by multibit digital-to-analog converter (DAC) nonlinearity to increase the spurious-free dynamic-range (SFDR). Switched-capacitor design techniques using low-threshold transistors reduce front-end sampling distortion. The 24.8 mm/sup 2/ chip in 0.5-/spl mu/m CMOS also integrates the decimation filter and voltage reference. The ADC achieves 90-dB signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) in the 1.25-MHz bandwidth and 102-dB SFDR with 270-mW power dissipation.

A 90-dB SNR 2.5-MHz output-rate ADC using cascaded multibit delta-sigma modulation at 8/spl times/ oversampling ratio

This 16b, 2.5 MHz output rate ADC is intended for xDSL and high-speed instrumentation applications. A fourth-order cascaded /spl Delta//spl Sigma/ modulator (/spl Delta//spl Sigma/M) operating at 20 MHz employs multibit quantization and dynamic element matching (DEM) to make all quantization noise contributions negligible at an oversampling ratio (OSR) of eight. The ADC achieves 90 dB signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) in a 1.25 MHz bandwidth, and 102 dB spurious free dynamic range (SFDR) with 270 mW dissipation.

A 90 dB SNR, 2.5 MHz output rate ADC using cascaded multibit /spl Delta//spl Sigma/ modulation at 8x oversampling ratio

A 24-bit 192-kHz sample-rate digital-to-analog converter (DAC) achieves 120-dB A-weighted dynamic range in the 20-kHz band, and consumes 310 mW with a 5-V power supply. A third-order five-bit /spl Delta//spl Sigma/ architecture optimized for high-end consumer audio has been developed and used. A switched-capacitor (SC) DAC combined with infinite-impulse response (IIR) and finite-impulse response (FIR) filters is employed to increase immunity to clock jitter, and reduce analog power. Partial-range dynamic element matching (DEM) enhances mismatch shaping with reduced circuit overhead. The 7.8-mm/sup 2/ chip fabricated in 0.5-/spl mu/ m CMOS integrates a stereo DAC and all functions required for DVD-audio playback.

A multibit delta-sigma audio DAC with 120-dB dynamic range

The paper describes a stereo digital-to-analog converter intended for portable digital-audio which operates at 1.5 V and consumes only 4.1 mW. A 15-level quantization, third-order delta-sigma was employed to reduce digital operation speed, relax out-of-band filtering requirements, and enhance immunity to clock jitter. The use of direct charge transfer switched-capacitor technique in the multibit reconstruction DAC reduces kT/C noise and element mismatch without increase of power dissipation. The data weighted averaging algorithm suppresses nonlinearity caused by capacitor mismatch by first-order noise-shaping, thereby making mismatch-induced noise negligible. The stereo audio DAC achieves 90 dB dynamic range and 81 dB peak signal-to-noise-plus-distortion ratio over a 20 kHz passband. The 5.3 mm/sup 2/ chip is fabricated in a 0.6 /spl mu/m CMOS technology which includes low-threshold devices.

A 1.5 V, 4.1 mW dual channel audio delta-sigma D/A converter

This paper presents the design of an analog-front-end (AFE) integrated into a DSP-based transceiver for both serial 10 Gbps KR-backplane and long-reach-multimode-fiber (LRM) applications. The receiver consists of a programmable gain amplifier (PGA) and a 6-bit 4-way time-interleaved ADC, which is digitally calibrated to compensate for the offset, gain and phase mismatches between the interleaved channels. With a 5 GHz input signal, the ADC achieves overall SNDR of 29 dB, while the measured SNDR of flash sub-ADC is 31.6 dB. The power efficiency FoM of the complete interleaved ADC is 1.4 pJ per conversion step. The PLL uses a calibrated LC-VCO and the TX features a full-rate 3-tap de-emphasis at the output. Inductively tuned buffers connected in tandem are employed to distribute the 10 GHz clock. Random and deterministic jitter measured at the TX output are 0.38 psrms and 2.65 pspp, respectively. Implemented in 65 nm CMOS technology, the AFE occupies an area of 3 mm2 and consumes 500 mW from a 1 V supply. BER of less than 10-15 is measured over legacy backplanes with 26 dB loss at Nyquist and the measured transceiver optical sensitivity is less than -13 dBm for all four LRM stressors, exceeding both the KR and the LRM specifications.

Ichiro Fujimori

Papers

A 90-dB SNR 2.5-MHz output-rate ADC using cascaded multibit delta-sigma modulation at 8/spl times/ oversampling ratio

A 90 dB SNR, 2.5 MHz output rate ADC using cascaded multibit /spl Delta//spl Sigma/ modulation at 8x oversampling ratio

A multibit delta-sigma audio DAC with 120-dB dynamic range

A 1.5 V, 4.1 mW dual channel audio delta-sigma D/A converter

A 500 mW ADC-Based CMOS AFE With Digital Calibration for 10 Gb/s Serial Links Over KR-Backplane and Multimode Fiber