Standing Wave Integrated Circuits for Power Generation, Radiation and Beam Steering at Millimeter Wave and Terahertz Spectrum

Standing Wave Integrated Circuits for Power Generation, Radiation and Beam Steering at Millimeter Wave and Terahertz Spectrum
Author: Hossein Jalili
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release: 2019
Genre:
ISBN: 9781658416443

The enormous potentials of millimeter wave (mm-wave) and terahertz (THz) frequency spectrum have sparked significant interest in breaking into this new frontier of technology. High-speed communication, imaging, spectroscopy and radar are just a few examples among many possible applications. Today, however, mm-wave and THz systems are mostly discrete, bulky and expensive, which significantly limits their accessibility and applications. Realization of integrated mm-wave/THz systems in low-cost and reliable silicon technologies can be a technological milestone, paving the way for tremendous opportunities both in high-tech market and academic research. This work is focused on tackling the major challenges of implementing mm-wave/THz integrated sources, including magnitude, bandwidth, radiation and beam steering of the source power. As we move to higher frequencies, the power that can be generated on chip continuously drops. Here, we have demonstrated a versatile method to maximize this power based on independent optimization of harmonic impedances. Scalable standing wave array structures are implemented based on efficient low-loss coupling schemes in order to further boost the produced power by increasing the number of contributing individual sources. Furthermore, we have presented a practical approach to maximizing radiation gain and consequently Equivalent Isotropic Radiated Power (EIRP) of the source by optimizing influential parameters of the radiation apparatus. Achieving wideband operation also becomes more challenging with increasing frequency. This is an important obstacle in our ability to take advantage of the uncongested and large available bandwidth at mm-wave/THz. We implemented standing wave oscillators and employed a varactor-less frequency tuning method to realize wideband operation. We considerably improved the bandwidth benchmark among state-of-the-art integrated radiator arrays in silicon technology. Furthermore, electronic beam steering is a crucial component of the modern wireless systems. However, realizing the necessary wide range of variable phase shift between sources is a difficult task at mm-wave/THz spectrum. Here, we have demonstrated a new phase shifting method based on combining standing and traveling waves and were able to achieve a record beam steering range among relevant published works to date. In this dissertation, we present the ideas, analysis, design methods and experimental results of four implemented prototype integrated circuits. First, a 230-GHz Voltage Controlled Oscillator (VCO) in a 65-nm CMOS technology is presented based on a coupled standing wave structure. This circuit is capable of providing high output power (3.4 dBm maximum) and wideband operation (8.3% frequency tuning range) simultaneously. Taking output power, bandwidth, power consumption and phase noise into account altogether, the circuit has a record performance figure-of-merit (FOM) compared to the state of the art. Then, a 0.34-THz 4-element scalable standing wave radiator array with 20.3 GHz (record bandwidth at the time of publication) and -10.5 dBm maximum radiated power is demonstrated, followed by a 0.34-THz wideband (15.1% frequency tuning range) and wide-angle (128° /53° range) 2D beam steering phased array, both in in 0.13μm SiGe BiCMOS. The phased array circuit has the largest bandwidth and widest steering range among integrated arrays above 300 GHz in silicon technology. Finally, a 0.46-THz 25-element scalable radiator array in a 65-nm CMOS is presented with high radiation gain through an optimized silicon lens set up. This coherent source delivers record EIRP of +19.3 dBm and 8.9% wide frequency tuning range, both largest values reported for integrated arrays above 400 GHz in silicon.

Twentieth Army Science Conference - Award Winning Papers

Twentieth Army Science Conference - Award Winning Papers
Author: Michael S Shur
Publisher: World Scientific
Total Pages: 154
Release: 1997-06-19
Genre:
ISBN: 9814545953

This important volume contains the 21 prize-winning papers presented at the Twentieth United States Army Science Conference under the sponsorship of the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Research, Development and Acquisition. The theme of the conference was “Science and Technology for Force XXI — the Force of the Twenty-First Century”. Original scientific and technical papers — written by U.S. Army civilian and military scientists and engineers — addressed the role of science and technology in providing a competitive edge for Force XXI. The papers in this book are in the following key technical areas: advanced materials and manufacturing including structures and energetics; microelectronics and photonics; sensors and information processing including communications; high-performance computing and simulation including modeling, displays, artificial intelligence, and virtual reality; advanced propulsion technologies including mobility and lethality; power generation, storage and conditioning including directed energy; biological, chemical and nuclear defense; life, medical and behavioral sciences including individual sustainability and soldier-system interface; environmental sciences and geosciences including atmospheric, space and environmental protection; engineering sciences including robotics, mechanics, fluid dynamics and survivability.

RF and mm-Wave Power Generation in Silicon

RF and mm-Wave Power Generation in Silicon
Author: Hua Wang
Publisher: Academic Press
Total Pages: 578
Release: 2015-12-10
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 0124095224

RF and mm-Wave Power Generation in Silicon presents the challenges and solutions of designing power amplifiers at RF and mm-Wave frequencies in a silicon-based process technology. It covers practical power amplifier design methodologies, energy- and spectrum-efficient power amplifier design examples in the RF frequency for cellular and wireless connectivity applications, and power amplifier and power generation designs for enabling new communication and sensing applications in the mm-Wave and THz frequencies. With this book you will learn: Power amplifier design fundamentals and methodologies Latest advances in silicon-based RF power amplifier architectures and designs and their integration in wireless communication systems State-of-the-art mm-Wave/THz power amplifier and power generation circuits and systems in silicon Extensive coverage from fundamentals to advanced design topics, focusing on various layers of abstraction: from device modeling and circuit design strategy to advanced digital and mixed-signal architectures for highly efficient and linear power amplifiers New architectures for power amplifiers in the cellar and wireless connectivity covering detailed design methodologies and state-of-the-art performances Detailed design techniques, trade-off analysis and design examples for efficiency enhancement at power back-off and linear amplification for spectrally-efficient non-constant envelope modulations Extensive coverage of mm-Wave power-generation techniques from the early days of the 60 GHz research to current state-of the-art reconfigurable, digital mm-Wave PA architectures Detailed analysis of power generation challenges in the higher mm-Wave and THz frequencies and novel technical solutions for a wide range for potential applications, including ultrafast wireless communication to sensing, imaging and spectroscopy Contributions from the world-class experts from both academia and industry

Enabling Millimeter-wave Circuit Techniques for High Data Rate Communication

Enabling Millimeter-wave Circuit Techniques for High Data Rate Communication
Author: Najme Ebrahimiseraji
Publisher:
Total Pages: 147
Release: 2017
Genre:
ISBN:

This dissertation has been mainly focused on reconfigurable mm-wave integrated circuits for next generation wireless communication systems (namely, 5G). One of the major approaches to making 5G a reality is the use of high-frequency signals in the millimeter-wave (mm-wave) frequency band to facilitate access to more bandwidth. This can deliver faster and more reliable data to more users. This dissertation contributes to making wideband, bidirectional, and scalable RFICs for high data rate point-to-point communications over large distances in mm-wave bands, particularly the E-band (71-76 GHz, 81-86 GHz). The E-band is a licensed band in the US, with 10 GHz of bandwidth allocated to low-cost, high-capacity, and point-to-point communication. For backhaul base-stations or air-to-ground communication, a scalable and large-element phased array is desired to acquire the appropriate isotropic radiated power and signal to noise ratio. Additionally, bidirectional operation supporting transmit (TX) and receive (RX) in a single aperture is desirable to minimize the area and save power. This dissertation has focused on new architectures for scalable, bidirectional, and wideband phased arrays using IBM\textquoteright s fastest SiGe technology, 90 nm. In this dissertation, the first E-band scalable phased-array transceiver is proposed based on coupled oscillator architecture. Coupled oscillator phased arrays have the advantage of low power and low complexity, resulting in an architecture that easily scales to the number of elements as multiple die can be aggregated to form a larger array through local oscillator (LO) power distribution and intermediate frequency (IF) power combining. However, silicon processes introduce undesirable parasitics and manufacturing tolerances to the transistor and passive devices. When multiple oscillators are present in a single die, the oscillators couple through the substrate. The substrate coupling introduces additional parasitic coupling paths between oscillators; this causes pulling and, consequently, amplitude and phase variation between the oscillators. In addition, the parasitics from the injection node to the substrate deviate the ILO performance from its ideal behavior. Conventional analysis of the amplitude and phase noise typically ignores the effect of the silicon substrate parasitic effects. This dissertation investigated the nonlinear dynamics of an injection-locked oscillator (ILO), where the effective circuit parameters of ILO performance were observed. More specifically, new amplitude and phase equations are derived that took into account the transistor\textquoteright s device parasitics and silicon substrate\textquoteright s parasitic coupling effects, including the transistor injection node parasitic capacitance ($C_{P}$), substrate parasitic conductive ($R_{sub}$) and dielectric ($C_{j}$) features. The derived models are compared with both the simulation and measurement results. The proposed 2x2 transceiver phased array block diagram described in this dissertation employs 4 injection-locked oscillators (ILOs) operating at a lower frequency range (in this case, 1/4 of the desired LO frequency), followed by a frequency quadrupler, to form a beam in transmit and receive modes. The bidirectional front-end is designed to operate at E-band within 3-dB bandwidth. Since the ILO-based phase shifting is technically challenging at millimeter-wave bands due to the parasitics of the injection circuitry and the oscillator phase noise trade-offs, the high-frequency limitations of the ILO phase shifter is considered and wide locking range and a less parasitic sensitive solution for current injection using folded-cascode architecture is proposed. The proposed ILO-based phase array architecture result in low phase noise and low channel to channel isolation supporting 6 Gb/s data rate at 256 QAM modulation. The conventional architectures of the E-band transceiver require a wide tuning range, around 10 GHz, for the LO signal and wide-bandwidth IF blocks. The wide-bandwidth requirement of LO and IF frequency for mm-waves increases the power consumption and complexity of the system. This dissertation proposes a novel architecture, named the \textquotedblleft Image-selection\textquotedblright{} E-band phased array. This new architecture makes the upper-band (81-86 GHz) and the lower-band (71-76 GHz) of the E-band spectrum images of each other in comparison to the LO signal, which is located at the center frequency (78.5 GHz). Therefore, an image rejection architecture is desired to select the wanted band while rejecting the other. The significant advantage of this architecture is that it only requires an LO with the quadrature phases within a tuning range lower than 1 GHz . This will relax the system design trade-offs to the circuit impairments. For bidirectional operation purpose and preventing use of quadrature generation circuitry at direct intermediate frequency (IF) or radio frequency (RF) signal paths, sliding-IF weaver architecture mixers are employed with the phase inverter in the divider path to select the upper or lower band. This architecture leads in to a flat conversion gain over the bandwidth and low amplitude and phase imbalance. The achieved QAM modulation data rate from this technique is the state of art,\lyxdeleted{najmebi}{Mon May 29 19:43:48 2017}{ } 9Gb/s (64 QAM) with less than 5\% EVM and 12 Gb/s (16 QAM) with less than 10\% EVM.

Millimeter-Wave Quasi-Optical Arrays

Millimeter-Wave Quasi-Optical Arrays
Author:
Publisher:
Total Pages: 32
Release: 1992
Genre:
ISBN:

Individual semiconductor devices can not output the power required for many future millimeter-wave systems. During this three year contract we have investigated an innovative way of coherently combining the outputs of a large number of semiconductor devices as a means of generating high power millimeter- wave signals. The combiner consists of a 2-D array of free running oscillators integrated into radiating antennas. Inter-element coupling in the array acts to lock all the elements together in-phase. Arrays of Gunn diodes and MESFETs have been built and will be described.

Scientific and Technical Aerospace Reports

Scientific and Technical Aerospace Reports
Author:
Publisher:
Total Pages: 602
Release: 1995
Genre: Aeronautics
ISBN:

Lists citations with abstracts for aerospace related reports obtained from world wide sources and announces documents that have recently been entered into the NASA Scientific and Technical Information Database.