Piet Wambacq – författare

Modern system-on-chip designs are increasingly mixed-signal designs that require efficient systematic design methodologies and supporting computer-aided design (CAD) tools to manage the design complexity in the available design time, that is ever decreasing due to tightening time-to-market constraints. The purpose of this work is to provide an overview of research results that have been achieved as part of the Low-Power Initiative of the European Union, in the field of analog, RF and mixed-signal design methodologies and CAD tools. It is a representative sampling of the state-of-the art in this area, with special focus on low-power design methodologies and tools for analog and RF circuits and architectures. Concrete designs, mainly for telecommunication applications, such as low-noise amplifiers, oscillators, filters, but also complete transceiver front-ends, are discussed and analyzed in a methodological way, and their modeling and simulation, both at the circuit level and at the architectural level, are treated.In this way, the eleven contributions of this book combine in a unique way designs with methodologies and CAD that should be interesting to designers and CAD developers, both in industry and academia.

With the increased efforts of the analogue design community to integrate analogue high-frequency front-ends for telecommunications, there has been heightened interest in the behaviour of nonlinear circuits since this can cause considerable degradation of signals. In analogue integrated circuits at lower frequencies, such as filters, nonlinear behaviour limits the dynamic range. Analogue integrated circuit designers often lack insight into nonlinear circuit behaviour. Indeed, designers are trained to reason in linear or linearized circuits but not in nonlinear ones. Numerical circuit simulations of nonlinear circuit behavior do not provide enough insight to the designer. This text attempts to provide both qualitative and quantitative insight into the nonlinear behavior of analogue integrated circuits at low and high frequencies. General techniques to suppress nonlinear behaviour such as pre-distortion, linear and nonlinear feedback are explained in detail and illustrated with realistic examples. In this way the book fills the gap between the theory of nonlinear systems and practical analogue integrated circuits.The book seeks to provide the reader with an in-depth analysis of elementary transistor stages, both CMOS and bipolar, as well as an analysis of several larger circuits. Use is made of advanced transistor models that are also discussed in the book. A calculation method yields closed-form expressions for nonlinear behaviour. These expressions are interpreted and illustrated with realistic numerical examples. The volume should be of interest to practising analog and mixed-signal design engineers and researchers in the field. It may also be suitable as a text for an advanced course on the subject.

With the increased efforts of the analog design community to integrate analog high-frequency front-ends for telecommunications, there has been heightened interest in the behaviour of nonlinear circuits since this can cause considerable degradation of signals. In analog integrated circuits at lower frequencies, such as filters, nonlinear behaviour limits the dynamic range. Analog integrated circuit designers often lack insight into nonlinear circuit behaviour. Indeed, designers are trained to reason in linear or linearized circuits but not in nonlinear ones. Numerical circuit simulations of nonlinear circuit behavior do not provide enough insight to the designer. Distortion Analysis of Analog Integrated Circuits, with a foreword by Robert G. Meyer, provides both qualitative and quantitative insight into the nonlinear behavior of analog integrated circuits at low and high frequencies. General techniques to suppress nonlinear behavior such as pre-distortion, linear and nonlinear feedback are explained in detail and illustrated with realistic examples. In this way the book fills the gap between the theory of nonlinear systems and practical analog integrated circuits.Distortion Analysis of Analog Integrated Circuits provides the reader with an in-depth analysis of elementary transistor stages, both CMOS and bipolar, as well as an analysis of several larger circuits. Hereby use is made of advanced transistor models that are also discussed in the book. The analyses take into account many more effects than in existing publications, thanks to the use of a calculation method that yields closed-form expressions for nonlinear behavior. These expressions are interpreted and illustrated with realistic numerical examples. Distortion Analysis of Analog Integrated Circuits is essential reading for practicing analog and mixed-signal design engineers and researchers in the field. It is also suitable as a text for an advanced course on the subject. From the foreword: 'I am sure that the analog circuit design community will [...] welcome this work by Dr. Wambacq and Prof. Sansen as a major contribution to the analog circuit design literature in the area of distortion analysis of electronic circuits. I am personally looking forward to having a copy readily available for reference when designing integrated circuits for communication systems.'Robert G. Meyer, Professor, Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, University of California, Berkeley.

Modern System-on-Chip designs are increasingly mixed-signal designs that require efficient systematic design methodologies and supporting computer-aided design (CAD) tools to manage the design complexity in the available design time, that is ever decreasing due to tightening time-to-market constraints. The purpose of Low-Power Design Techniques and CAD Tools for Analog and RF Integrated Circuits is to provide an overview of very recent research results that have been achieved as part of the Low-Power Initiative of the European Union, in the field of analog, RF and mixed-signal design methodologies and CAD tools. It is a representative sampling of the current state of the art in this area, with special focus on low-power design methodologies and tools for analog and RF circuits and architectures. Concrete designs, mainly for telecommunication applications, such as low-noise amplifiers, oscillators, filters, but also complete transceiver front-ends, are discussed and analyzed in a methodological way, and their modeling and simulation, both at the circuit level and at the architectural level, are treated. In this way, the eleven contributions of this book combine in a unique way designs with methodologies and CAD that will be interesting to designers and CAD developers, both in industry and academia.

This book explains concepts behind fractional subsampling-based frequency synthesis that is re-shaping today’s art in the field of low-noise LO generation. It covers advanced material, giving clear guidance for development of background-calibrated environments capable of spur-free synthesis and wideband phase modulation. It further expands the concepts into the field of subsampling polar transmission, where the newly developed architecture enables unprecedented spectral efficiency levels, unquestionably required by the upcoming generation of wireless standards.

This book discusses low power techniques for millimeter wave transmitter IC. Considerations for the front-end design are followed by several implementation examples in the 60GHz band in CMOS down to 28nm technology. Additionally, the design and implementation details of digitally-modulated millimeter wave polar transmitters are presented.

This book introduces a completely novel architecture that can relax the trade-off existing today between noise, power and area consumption in a very suitable solution for advanced wireless communication systems. Through the combination of charge-domain operation with incremental signaling, this architecture gives the best of both worlds, providing the reduced area and high portability of digital-intensive architectures with an improved out-of-band noise performance given by intrinsic noise filtering capabilities. Readers will be enabled to design higher performance radio front-ends that consume less power and area, especially with respect to the transmitter and power amplifier designs, considered by many the “battery killers” on most mobile devices.

This book introduces a completely novel architecture that can relax the trade-off existing today between noise, power and area consumption in a very suitable solution for advanced wireless communication systems.

This book describes the design of a receiver front-end circuit for operation in the 60GHz range in 90nm CMOS. Physical layout of the test circuit and post-layout simulations for the implementation of a test chip including the QVCO and the first stage divider are also presented. The content of this book is particularly of interest to those working on mm-wave frequency generation and signal reception.