No description available.

Application of neural prostheses in today's medicine successfully helps patients to increase their activities of daily life and participate in social activities again. These implantable microsystems provide an interface to the nervous system, giving cellular resolution to physiological processes unattainable today with non-invasive methods. The latest developments in genetic engineering, nanotechnologies and materials science have paved the way for these complex systems to interface the human nervous system. The ideal system for neural signal recording would be a fully implantable device which is capable of amplifying the neural signals and transmitting them to the outside world while sustaining a long-term and accurate performance, therefore different sciences from neurosciences, biology, electrical engineering and computer science have to interact and discuss the synergies to develop a practical system which can be used in daily medicine practice. This work investigates the main building blocks necessary to improve the quality of acquired signal from the micro-electronics and MEMS perspectives. While all of these components will be ultimately embedded in a fully implantable recording probe, each of them addresses and deals with a specific obstacle in the neural signal recording path. Specifically we present a low-voltage low-noise low-power CMOS amplifier particularly designed for neural recording applications. This is done by surveying a number of designs and evaluating each design against the requirements for a neural recording system such as power dissipation and noise, and then choosing the most suitable topology for design and implementation of a fully implantable system. In addition a surface modification method is investigated to improve the sacrificial properties and biocompatibility of probe in order to extend the implant life and enhance the signal quality. / Applied Science, Faculty of / Electrical and Computer Engineering, Department of / Graduate

Modern wireless communication systems transmit complex modulated signals with high peak to average ratio in order to deliver high data rates. It demands wide bandwidth and rigorous efficiency performance for power amplifiers. Today’s conventional RF power amplifiers have relatively poor operating efficiency and require more power and area for operation. Therefore, more research on high efficiency power amplifier is crucial to the growth of the wireless industry. Until recent days, WiMAX systems are using technology processes such as Gallium Arsenide (GaAs) and Si LDMOSFET to obtain the performance. Although they are providing the required functional performance, they do not optimize cost and/or size. The primary focus of this thesis is to enhance the efficiency and output power of a compact microwave Power Amplifier suitable for a WiMAX base station. To achieve this goal, this thesis explores the highly efficient switched mode Class E microwave power amplifier using the Gallium Nitride on Silicon Carbide HFET (GaN-on-SiC) technology. The smallest gate length (0.15 µm) device recently released by NRC is used in this design. It provides higher performance at lower cost and area than the alternative Gallium Arsenide (GaAs) technology. Importance is given in designing the bias network of the device. The biasing network has a great impact on efficiency of power amplifiers. Many new techniques of Class E design have been presented to date, but there is not significant improvement related to the biasing network. A highly efficient Class E power amplifier for WiMAX base station transmitter was developed in this thesis for 2.5 GHz application. An improved bias network was introduced for biasing the active device. This successful design shows acceptable simulated performance with a gain of 10.12 dB, an output power of 34.12 dB, and a power added efficiency of 41.7 % at the peak output power.

In this research, an innovative phased array antenna module is proposed to implement a high-power, high-efficient and compact C-band radio transmitter. The module configuration, which can be integrated into front-end circuits, was designed as planar layers stacked up together to form a metallic cube. The layers were fabricated by using a Computer Numerical Control (CNC) milling machine and screwed together. The antenna parts and the amplifier units were designed at two opposite sides of the cube to spread the dissipated heat produced by the amplifiers and act as a heat sink. Merging the antenna parts with the amplifier circuits offers additional advantages such as decreasing the total power loss, mass, and volume of the transmitter modules by removing the extra power divider and combiner networks and connectors between them as well as reducing the total signal path. To achieve both a maximum possible radiation efficiency and high directivity, the aperture waveguide antenna was selected as the array element. Four antenna elements have been located in a cavity to be excited equally and the cavity is excited through a slot on its underside so a compact subarray is formed. Antenna measurements demonstrated a 15.5 dBi gain and 20 dB return loss at 10 % fractional bandwidth centered around 5.8 GHz and with more than 98% radiation efficiency. The total dimensions of the subarray are approximately 8*12*4 cm3. The outcoming signal from the amplifiers is transferred into the slot exciting the subarray through a microstrip-to-waveguide transition (MWT). A novel and robust MWT structure was designed for the presented application. The MWT was also integrated with a microstrip coupler to monitor the power from the amplifier output. The measured insertion loss of the MWT along with the microstrip coupler was less than 0.25 dB along with more than 20 dB return loss within the same bandwidth of the subarray. The microstrip coupler shows 38 dB of coupling and more than 48 dB of isolation with negligible effects on the amplifier output signal and the insertion/return loss of the MWT. The amplifier subcomponents consist of power combiners/dividers (PCDs), high power amplifiers (HPAs) and bias circuitry. A Monolithic Microwave Integrated Circuit (MMIC) three-stage HPA was designed in a commercially available 0.15 um AlGaN/GaN HEMT technology provided by National Research Council Canada (NRC) and occupies an area of 4.7*3.7 mm2. To stabilize the HPA, a novel inductive degeneration technique was successfully used. To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first time this technique has been used to stabilize HPAs. Careful considerations on input/output impedances of all HEMTs were taken into account to prevent parametric oscillations. Other instability sources, i.e. odd-mode, even-mode, and low frequency (bias circuit) oscillations were also prevented by designing the required stabilization circuits. The electromagnetic simulation of the HPA shows 35 W (45.5 dBm) of saturated output power, 26 dB large signal gain and 29% power added efficiency within the same operating bandwidth as the subarray. The output distortion is less than 27 dB, indicating that the HPA is highly linear. The PCD was designed by utilizing a novel, enhanced configuration of a Gysel structure implemented on Rogers RT-Duroid5880. The insertion loss of the Gysel is less than 0.2 dB while return loss and isolation are greater than 20 dB over the entire bandwidth. The same subarray area (8*12 cm2) has been used for the amplifier circuits and up to eight HPAs can be included in each module. All the above parts of the transmitter module were fabricated and measured, except the MMIC-HPA.

The main purpose of this diploma thesis is to study of possibilities of optical amplification, ways of realization optical amplifiers and construction of operational EDFA amplifier . According to gained information and knowledge about optical amplifiers, the basic configuration of EDFA amplifier with posibility of connecting up to two EDFA modules, which uses erbium-dopped fibers for amplification, was made. There was also developed a 3D model of front control panel of the amplifier and placement of particullar items was planned. Next step was the construction of EDFA amplifier device and measuring of its parameters and features.

While a lot of time and resources have been placed into transceiver design, due to the pace of a conventional engineering design process, the design of a power amplifier is often completed using scattered resources; and not always in a methodological manner, and frequently even by an iterative trial and error process. In this thesis, a research question is posed which enables for the investigation of the possibility of streamlining the design flow for power amplifiers. After thorough theoretical investigation of existing power amplifier design methods and modelling, inductors inevitably used in power amplifier design were identified as a major drawback to efficient design, even when examples of inductors are packaged in design HIT-Kits. The main contribution of this research is engineering of an inductor design process, which in-effect contributes towards enhancing conventional power amplifiers. This inductance search algorithm finds the highest quality factor configuration of a single-layer square spiral inductor within certain tolerance using formulae for inductance and inductor parasitics of traditional single-π inductor model. Further contribution of this research is a set of algorithms for the complete design of switch-mode (Class-E and Class-F) power amplifiers and their output matching networks. These algorithms make use of classic deterministic design equations so that values of parasitic components can be calculated given input parameters, including required output power, centre frequency, supply voltage, and choice of class of operation. The hypothesis was satisfied for SiGe BiCMOS S35 process from Austriamicrosystems (AMS). Several metal-3 and thick-metal inductors were designed using the abovementioned algorithm and compared with experimental results provided by AMS. Correspondence was established between designed, experimental and EM simulation results, enabling qualification of inductors other than those with experimental results available from AMS by means of EM simulations with average relative errors of 3.7% for inductors and 21% for the Q factor at its peak frequency. For a wide range of inductors, Q-factors of 10 and more were readily experienced. Furthermore, simulations were performed for number of Class-E and Class-F amplifier configurations with HBTs with ft greater than 60 GHz and total emitter area of 96 μm² as driving transistors to complete the hypothesis testing. For the complete PA system design (including inductors), simulations showed that switch-mode power amplifiers for 50 Ω load at 2.4 GHz centre frequency can be designed using the streamlined method of this research for the output power of about 6 dB less than aimed. This power loss was expected, since it can be attributed to non-ideal properties of the driving transistor and Q-factor limitations of the integrated inductors, assumptions which the computations of the routine were based on. Although these results were obtained for a single micro-process, it was further speculated that outcome of this research has a general contribution, since streamlined method can be used with a much wider range of CMOS and BiCMOS processes, when low-gigahertz operating power amplifiers are needed. This theory was confirmed by means of simulation and fabrication in 180 nm BiCMOS process from IBM, results of which were also presented. The work presented here, was combined with algorithms for SPICE netlist extraction and the spiral inductor layout extraction (CIF and GDSII formats). This secondary research outcome further contributed to the completeness of the design flow. All the above features showed that the routine developed here is substantially better than cut-and-try methods for design of power amplifiers found in the existing body of knowledge. / Thesis (PhD(Eng))--University of Pretoria, 2011. / Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering / unrestricted

Power amplifiers (PA) are typically the most power-consuming building blocks of RF transceivers. Therefore, the design of a high-efficiency radio frequency power amplifier is the most obvious solution to overcoming the battery lifetime limitation in the portable communication systems. A power amplifier's classes (A, AB, B, C, F, E, etc), and design techniques (Load-pull and large-signal S-parameters techniques) are presented. The design accuracy of class-A power amplifier based on the small-signal S-parameters was investigated, where compression in the power gain was used as an indicator for design accuracy. The effect of drain voltage variation on the power gain compression has been studied in this research. The class-E amplifier has a maximum theoretical efficiency of 100%. It consists of a single transistor that is driven as a switch and a passive load network. The passive load network is designed to minimize drain (collector) voltage and current waveforms overlapping, which minimize the output power dissipation. Two L-band class-E amplifiers are implemented in section 5.3. One of them is a lumped elements based circuit and the other is a transmission lines based circuit. Both circuits show good performance (60% PAD) over a wide bandwidth (1.0 GHz). In section 5.4, lumped elements and transmission lines based X-band class-E amplifiers are presented. Both circuits show good performance (62% PAD) over wide bandwidth (4.8 GHz). A new technique to improve the drain efficiency of the class-E amplifier has been proposed. This technique uses two passive networks. One of them is in a series with the shunt capacitor CS and the other is in a series with the transistor's source terminal. This technique shows improvement in the drain efficiency, which jumps from 62% to 82%. Last few years have seen an increase in the popularity of the wireless communication systems. As a result, the demand for compact, low-cost, and low power portable (Single-chip) transceivers has increased dramatically. Among the transceiver's building blocks is the power amplifier. Thus, there is a need for a low-cost power amplifier. A 900 MHz CMOS RF PA with one-watt output power and a high power added efficiency (68%) is presented in chapter 6. This PA can be used in the European standard for mobile communications (GSM) handset transmitter. / Ph. D.

No description available.

The power amplifiers are typically the most power-consuming block in wireless communication systems. Spectrum is expensive, and newer technologies demand transmission of maximum amount of data with minimum spectrum usage. This requires sophisticated modulation techniques, leading to wide, dynamic signals that require linear amplification. Although linear amplification is achievable, it always comes at the expense of efficiency. Most of the modern wireless applications such as WCDMA use non-constant envelope modulation techniques with a high peak to average ratio. Linearity being a critical issue, power amplifiers implemented in such applications are forced to operate at a backed off region from saturation. Therefore, in order to overcome the battery lifetime limitation, a design of a high efficiency power amplifier that can maintain the efficiency for a wider range of radio frequency input signal is the obvious solution. A new technique that improves the drain efficiency of a linear power amplifier such as Class A or AB, for a wider range of output power, has been investigated in this research. The Doherty technique consists of two amplifiers in parallel; in such a way that the combination enhances the power added efficiency of the main amplifier at 6dB back off from the maximum output power. The classes of operation of power amplifier (A, AB, B, C etc), and the design techniques are presented. Design of a 2.14 GHz Doherty power amplifier has been provided in chapter 4. This technique shows a 15% increase in power added efficiency at 6 dB back off from the compression point. This PA can be implemented in WCDMA base station transmitter. / Master of Science

<p> The characteristics of small-signal gain in a TE CO₂ laser amplifier are investigated using a new technique based on gain measurements of the sequence, hot and regular CO₂ laser bands. This new technique enables us, for the first time, to determine accurately the rotational and vibrational temperatures characterizing the CO₂ laser system. The gain ratio of the sequence band to the regular band provides a simple and accurate determination of the ν₃ mode vibrational temperature. The variation of this ν₃ mode vibrational temperature with discharge energy enables us to determine the net pumping efficiency to the ν₃ mode levels as a function of input energy. It is found that the ν₃ mode vibrational temperature saturates at high input energy. This saturation sets an upper limit to the gain attainable in TE CO₂ laser amplifiers. Once this saturation occurs, increasing background gas temperature causes a reduction in gain at high input energy. </p> <p> As we can measure all the characteristic temperatures relevant to the gain medium, a comparison between the calculated and experimental gain can be carried out with no adjustable parameters. The result of such a direct comparison confirms both the validity of the conventional "mode temperature" model for CO₂ laser dynamics and the validity of our measurement technique for vibrational temperatures. </p> <p> The results of the present study have shown the existence of a de-excitation mechanism occurring in the discharge, which reduces drastically the pumping efficiency to the ν₃ mode at high discharge energy. It is therefore essential to incorporate such a de-excitation mechanism in the accurate modeling of CO₂ laser dynamics. The present study contributes to a better understanding of CO₂ laser dynamics at high discharge energies. </p> / Thesis / Master of Science (MSc)