Bram Nauta – författare

High-speed Photodiodes in Standard CMOS Technology describes high-speed photodiodes in standard CMOS technology which allow monolithic integration of optical receivers for short-haul communication. For short haul communication the cost aspect is important , and therefore it is desirable that the optical receiver can be integrated in the same CMOS technology as the rest of the system. If this is possible then ultimately a singe-chip system including optical inputs becomes feasible, eliminating EMC and crosstalk problems, while data rate can be extremely high.

The problem of photodiodes in standard CMOS technology it that they have very limited bandwidth, allowing data rates up to only 50Mbit per second. High-speed Photodiodes in Standard CMOS Technology first analyzes the photodiode behaviour and compares existing solutions to enhance the speed. After this, the book introduces a new and robust electronic equalizer technique that makes data rates of 3Gb/s possible, without changing the manufacturing technology. The application of this technique can be found in short haul fibre communication, optical printed circuit boards, but also photodiodes for laser disks.

Low Noise Amplifiers (LNAs) are commonly used to amplify signals that are too weak for direct processing for example in radio or cable receivers. Traditionally, low noise amplifiers are implemented via tuned amplifiers, exploiting inductors and capacitors in resonating LC-circuits. This can render very low noise but only in a relatively narrow frequency band close to resonance. There is a clear trend to use more bandwidth for communication, both via cables (e.g. cable TV, internet) and wireless links (e.g. satellite links and Ultra Wideband Band). Hence wideband low-noise amplifier techniques are very much needed.

Wideband Low Noise Amplifiers Exploiting Thermal Noise Cancellation explores techniques to realize wideband amplifiers, capable of impedance matching and still achieving a low noise figure well below 3dB. This can be achieved with a new noise cancelling technique as described in this book. By using this technique, the thermal noise of the input transistor of the LNA can be cancelled while the wanted signal is amplified! The book gives a detailed analysis of this technique and presents several new amplifier circuits.

This book is directly relevant for IC designers and researchers working on integrated transceivers. Although the focus is on CMOS circuits, the techniques can just as well be applied to other IC technologies, e.g. bipolar and GaAs, and even in discrete component technologies.

Calibration Techniques in Nyquist A/D Converters analyses different A/D-converter architectures with an emphasis on the maximum achievable power efficiency. It is shown that in order to achieve high speed and high accuracy at high power efficiency, calibration is required. Calibration reduces the overall power consumption by using the available digital processing capability to relax the demands on critical power hungry analog components. Several calibration techniques are analyzed.

The calibration techniques presented in this book are applicable to other analog-to-digital systems, such as those applied in integrated receivers. Further refinements will allow using analog components with less accuracy, which will then be compensated by digital signal processing. The presented methods allow implementing this without introducing a speed or power penalty.

This book is based on the 18 tutorials presented during the 31st workshop on Advances in Analog Circuit Design held in Villach, Austria. In it, expert designers share their insights on a variety of topics at the frontier of analog circuit design, with specific contributions focusing on the design of imaging sensors, power management circuits, PLLs and frequency synthesizers. As such, for anyone involved in analog circuit research and development, this book provides a valuable overview of the state-of-the-art.

Time-interleaved Analog-to-Digital Converters describes the research performed on low-power time-interleaved ADCs. A detailed theoretical analysis is made of the time-interleaved Track & Hold, since it must be capable of handling signals in the GHz range with little distortion, and minimal power consumption. Timing calibration is not attractive, therefore design techniques are presented which do not require timing calibration.

The design of power efficient sub-ADCs is addressed with a theoretical analysis of a successive approximation converter and a pipeline converter. It turns out that the first can consume about 10 times less power than the latter, and this conclusion is supported by literature.

Time-interleaved Analog-to-Digital Converters describes the design of a high performance time-interleaved ADC, with much attention for practical design aspects, aiming at both industry and research. Measurements show best-inclass performance with a sample-rate of 1.8 GS/s, 7.9 ENOBs and a power efficiency of 1 pJ/conversion-step.