Innovative design and realization of microwave and millimeter wave integrated circuits

INNOVATIVE DESIGN AND REALIZATION OF MICROWAVE AND MILLIMETER-WAVE INTEGRATED CIRCUITS CHEN YING (B.Eng., Nanyang Technological University, Singapore) A THESIS SUBMITTED FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENT OF ELECTRICAL AND COMPUTER ENGINEERING NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE 2011 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The work described in this thesis could not have been accomplished without the help and support of many individuals. First and foremost, I owe my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Assistant Professor Koen Mouthaan, for his guidance and continued encouragement throughout my PhD study. I still remember on my first day, he said he would like to be treated as a colleague and friend, so that we can have open discussions on any problems encountered during the research and even challenge each other’s opinions. His unique way of supervision has encouraged my independent and out-of-the-box thinking that has been inspiring me to explore innovative solutions for challenging research topics. Prof. Koen has always stressed the importance of practical solutions and experimental verifications, which are extremely crucial for engineering oriented research. I am especially grateful for his time and effort in weekly meetings and his help to overcome difficulties using his rich technical knowledge and experience whenever I got stuck. I have also benefited from his training in many other aspects, such as technical writing, analytical thinking, English language, and so on. All of these have been beneficial both to my academic progress and personal growth. I sincerely appreciate my mentor, Marcel Geurts, during my one-year research internship in NXP Semiconductors, Nijmegen, The Netherlands. Without him, my internship would not have been possible. He has made available his support in a number of ways. For example, he has set up an excellent platform, both software and hardware, in order for me to work on a very challenging research project that has a potential industry impact. He has also encouraged me to explore and ii implement good new ideas in the project. And I would like to thank him for his many constructive technical advices during my internship. Besides, I am also very grateful for his consistent help and care, both materially and emotionally, during my internship in The Netherlands. My gratitude is extended to all the colleagues in NXP Semiconductors during my internship. I would like to specially thank Louis Praamsma, Johan Janssen, Dr. Marek Schmidt-Szalowski, Dr. Koen van Caekenberghe, Hasan Gul, Rainier Breunisse, and Fanfan Meng from the High Performance RF group at NXP Nijmegen, for lots of insightful technical discussions and support in the measurements during the project. I am also grateful for the several critical design reviews by Dr. Domine Leenaerts, Dr. Jos Bergervoet, and Edwin van der Heijden from the RF Advanced Development Team at NXP Eindhoven. They are all experts in their fields, and I learned a lot from them. I appreciate the friendly interactions with Dr. Fujiang Lin, Dr. Kai Kang, and Dr. James Brinkhoff from the Integrated Circuit and System Lab in the Institute of Microelectronics, Singapore. Many useful discussions with them have been of great benefit to my research work. I am also thankful to all the members from the MMIC Lab of the National University of Singapore. I feel fortunate to have worked with them in a stimulating and enjoyable research environment. Those experiences are my cherished memories. My warmest thanks belong to my dear wife for her enormous support throughout my PhD study and for bringing our lovely baby son into the world. Last but not the least, I wish to thank my parents for bringing me up and for their forever love. I have been learning from them to be a responsible, optimistic and self-motivated person. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter : Introduction 1.1 Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2 Design Challenges in Microwave and Millimeter-Wave ICs . . . . . . 1.2.1 Technologies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2.2 Circuit Topologies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2.3 System Architectures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Overview of Building Blocks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.3.1 Low Noise Amplifier (LNA) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.3.2 Power Amplifier (PA) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.3.3 Mixer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 1.3.4 Oscillator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 1.3.5 Filter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 1.4 Motivation, Scope and Thesis Organization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 1.5 List of Publications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 1.3 Chapter : Parasitic Cancellation Technique for Colpitts Oscillators 30 2.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 2.2 Conventional Colpitts Oscillators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 2.2.1 Negative Resistance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 2.2.2 High Frequency Limitations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 2.2.3 Miller Effect of Cgd on Negative Resistance . . . . . . . . . . 33 2.3 Parasitic Cancellation Technique . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 iv 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 2.3.1 Description of Parasitic Cancellation Technique . . . . . . . 37 2.3.2 Input Impedance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 2.3.3 Frequency Tuning Range . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 2.3.4 Q-factor of the Inductor Lgd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 2.3.5 Phase Noise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 2.3.6 Parasitic Cancellation Flexibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 2.3.7 Increasing the Maximum Operating Frequency . . . . . . . . 46 2.3.8 Large-Signal Regime and Uncertainty in the Miller Capacitance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 Discrete Design Verification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 2.4.1 Oscillator Designs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 2.4.2 Experimental Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 MMIC Proof of Concept . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 2.5.1 X-Band and Ka-Band Colpitts Oscillator Designs . . . . . . 57 2.5.2 Experimental Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 2.5.3 Discussions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 Application to Dual-Band Colpitts VCO Design . . . . . . . . . . . 68 2.6.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 2.6.2 Dual-Band Colpitts VCO by Switched Negative Resistance Shaping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 2.6.3 Experimental Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 2.6.4 Discussions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 Chapter : Varactorless Frequency-Tuning Technique for Wideband LC VCOs 79 3.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 3.2 Wideband Varactorless VCO Using a Tunable NI Cell . . . . . . . . 80 v 3.3 3.2.1 Principle of Tunable NI Cell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 3.2.2 Start-Up Condition and Frequency-Tuning Analysis . . . . . 82 3.2.3 Effect of Transistor Parasitics and Output Capacitance of Current Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85 3.2.4 Effect of Degeneration Inductor’s Q-factor . . . . . . . . . . 87 3.2.5 Large-Signal Behavior . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 3.2.6 VCO Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90 3.2.7 Experimental Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 3.2.8 Discussions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96 Wideband Varactorless VCO with Constant Output Power Using Tunable NI and NC Cells . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 3.3.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 3.3.2 Principle of a tunable NC cell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102 3.3.3 Combining Tunable NI and NC Cells to Achieve Constant Output Power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104 3.4 3.3.4 VCO Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105 3.3.5 Experimental Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108 3.3.6 Discussions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112 Chapter : Highly-Linear Up-Conversion Mixer with Ultra-Low LO Feedthrough 114 4.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114 4.2 Proposed Up-Conversion Mixer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116 4.3 4.2.1 Topology Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116 4.2.2 Circuit Description . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118 Design Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119 4.3.1 Output Linearity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119 vi 4.3.2 LO Feedthrough . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121 4.3.3 Output Buffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132 4.4 Design Implementation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133 4.5 Experimental Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134 4.6 Discussions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138 4.7 4.6.1 Performance Comparison . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138 4.6.2 Across-Wafer Spread . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141 Chapter : Conclusions and Recommendations 143 5.1 Parasitic Cancellation Technique for Colpitts Oscillators . . . . . . 143 5.2 Varactorless Frequency-Tuning Technique for Wideband LC VCOs 5.3 Highly-Linear Up-Conversion Mixer with Ultra-Low LO Feedthrough146 BIBLIOGRAPHY 145 148 vii Summary The current trend in wireless communication systems is towards higher operating frequencies with wider bandwidth. However, the higher operating frequencies lead to numerous design challenges in microwave and millimeter-wave ICs that are not present or not significant at lower frequencies. This thesis aims to propose and realize innovative circuit topologies and techniques in order to overcome design challenges in key building blocks of microwave and millimeter-wave front-end ICs. In order to overcome the start-up problem for microwave and millimeter-wave Colpitts oscillators, a parasitic cancellation technique is proposed. By cancelling the parasitic gate-drain or base-collector capacitance of the transistor using an inductor, the negative resistance, and hence, the maximum operating frequency of the microwave and millimeter-wave Colpitts oscillators are increased. The feasibility of the technique is first demonstrated in a discrete design as a proof of concept. Then, the MMIC proof of concept is shown using three Colpitts oscillator designs, one at X-band and two at Ka-band, in a 0.2-µm GaAs pHEMT technology with a fT of 60 GHz. An extended application of the parasitic cancellation technique is also introduced, which allows dual-band Colpitts VCO design using switched negative resistance shaping. In order to overcome the tuning limitations of conventional varactor-based VCOs, a new varactorless tuning technique suitable for microwave and millimeter-wave applications is proposed. The oscillation frequency is tuned using tunable negativeinductance (NI) and tunable negative-capacitance (NC) cells. Two wideband varactorless VCOs, implemented in a 0.35-µm SiGe BiCMOS process, are presented. A highly-linear up-conversion Gilbert mixer with ultra-low LOFT for Ka-band viii VSAT applications is also presented. An individual biasing technique has been proposed to reduce the LOFT due to device mismatch. In addition, a method is proposed to compensate the EM-related LOFT. NXP’s QUBIC4X 0.25-µm SiGe:C BiCMOS technology is used for the implementation. The proposed up-conversion mixer can be used as a mixer cell to form the fully integrated image-reject singlesideband (SSB) up-converter with single-conversion low-IF architecture. ix LIST OF TABLES 1.1 Technology requirements for RF/analog mixed-signal CMOS, bipolar, and on-chip passives. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1 Component Values for Discrete Oscillator Design Verifications . . . 53 2.2 Measured Oscillator Performance Summary For Discrete Design Verification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 2.3 Performance Summary and Comparison of the Oscillators at X-Band 65 2.4 Performance Summary and Comparison of the Oscillators from KBand to Ka-Band . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 2.5 Component Values of the Dual-Band Colpitts VCO . . . . . . . . . 73 2.6 Performance Summary of the Dual-Band Colpitts VCO . . . . . . . 77 3.1 Performance Comparison with both Varactorless and Varactor-Based Wideband LC VCOs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2 97 Performance Summary of the Varactorless VCO with the Tunable NI and NC Cells . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 4.1 Summary of LOFT Cancellations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127 4.2 Performance Summary and Comparison of the Up-Conversion Mixers in a Similar Frequency Range. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140 4.3 Probing Repeatability Test for LOFT. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140 x switching stage from the IF transconductance stage. Note that the proposed individual biasing technique is not suitable for zero-IF up-conversion due to the DC decoupling from IF to RF. In order to compensate the EM-related LOFT, an additional method is proposed by deliberately applying certain amplitude and phase imbalances to the differential LO input. The proposed up-conversion mixer is implemented in NXP’s QUBIC4X 0.25-µm SiGe:C BiCMOS technology. The mixer achieves a very high LOFT suppression of −61.5 dBc with the one-tone IMD3 spurs below −45.9 dBc relative to the desired output level. The measured OP1dB and two-tone OIP3 are −4 dBm and +9 dBm respectively. In order to make a fair performance comparison, LOFTnorm for −50 dBc IMD3 has been defined. The proposed up-conversion mixer achieves LOFTnorm of −54.6 dBc, which is better than previously published up-conversion mixers, and significantly advances the state-of-the-art performance. 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Itakura, “A 1V 2GHz CMOS up-converter using self-switching mixers,” in IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC), pp. 402–476, 2002. 162 [...]... communications at X-band and Ka-band, automotive radar at 24 GHz and 77 GHz and unlicensed short range wireless communication at 60 GHz Fig 1.2 illustrates the frequency spectrum allocation for various wireless applications 1.2 Design Challenges in Microwave and Millimeter- Wave ICs The higher operating frequencies of wireless applications lead to a lot of design challenges in microwave and millimeter- wave ICs... 55 2.22 Measured single-sideband phase noise for the three discrete oscillators 56 2.23 Simulated input resistance Rin and reactance Xin versus frequency: (a) X-band design, (b) Ka-band design, (c) Ka-band (flexible) design 59 2.24 Micrographs of the fabricated MMIC Colpitts oscillators: (a) Xband design, (b) Ka-band design, (c) Ka-band (flexible) design 61 2.25 Measured output spectrum... limitations, many microwave and millimeter- wave ICs can only be designed with an fT that is 2∼5 times greater than the system operating frequency, which poses much bigger design challenges Over the past several decades, III-V technologies, such as GaAs or InP, have traditionally dominated the microwave and millimeter- wave spectrum, due to their low loss semi-insulated substrates and high fT Today,... performance of microwave and millimeter- wave IC designs Furthermore, in spite of intensive research carried out to improve the quality factor (Q-factor) of the passive components in silicon technologies [7]–[10], the Q-factors at microwave and millimeter- wave are still lower than those in III-V Therefore, in the microwave and millimeter- wave ICs market today, III-V technology targets the low-volume highperformance... microwave and millimeter- wave suffer from serious trade-offs in operating frequency, power consumption and frequency bandwidth, which makes the design of frequency dividers challenging In general, the selection of a proper system architecture requires knowledge of the overall system specification and clear understanding of both system-level and circuit-level trade-offs 1.3 1.3.1 Overview of Building Blocks Low... bipolar, and on-chip passives [2] As shown, continuous improvements in technology are required 1.2.2 Circuit Topologies The challenges of circuit topologies are strongly influenced by the constraints of technologies, such as limited fT , low Q-factors of the passives, and large parasitics of devices Generally, conventional topologies at lower frequencies don’t work well at microwave and millimeter- wave. .. the years 2005 and 2007 The gap between Si/SiGe and III-V technologies is getting narrower On the other hand, in Si/SiGe technologies, the power handling capabilities do not improve with scaling [6] In addition, because the passive components as well as interconnects don’t scale with the transistors, their parasitics severely limit the performance of microwave and millimeter- wave IC designs Furthermore,... 138 4.17 Illustration of the relationship between LOFT suppression and output linearity 138 4.18 Comparison of the LOFTnorm of the proposed up-conversion mixer with other previously published up-conversion mixers 139 4.19 Measured across-wafer spread of LOFT with LO phase imbalance of −15o 141 xviii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS fT transistor... scaling of transistor’s feature size towards submicrometer, the fT for Si and SiGe technologies has increased to beyond 100 GHz The enhancement of fT makes these technologies feasible for many microwave and millimeter- wave applications that were once exclusively realized in III-V technologies The key advantage of using Si/SiGe technologies is their higher integration capabilities with the digital baseband... for LNA design However, the major drawback of the inductive source degeneration topology is the narrow-band characteristics 1.3.2 Power Amplifier (PA) The last stage of a typical transmitter is a power amplifier, which has quite different design principles and considerations as compared to the LNA design In PA design, noise is no longer a concern, and the gain is usually lower than that in the LNA design . INNOVATIVE DESIGN AND REALIZATION OF MICROWAVE AND MILLIMETER- WAVE INTEGRATED CIRCUITS CHEN YING (B.Eng., Nanyang Technological University, Singapore) A THESIS SUBMITTED FOR THE DEGREE OF. thesis aims to propose and realize innovative circuit topologies and techniques in order to overcome design challenges in key building blocks of microwave and millimeter- wave front-end ICs. In. resistance, and hence, the maximum operating frequency of t he microwave and millimeter- wave Colpitts oscillators are increased. The feasibility of the technique is first demonstrated in a discrete design