Terahertz (THz) heterodyne receiver systems are required by NASA to monitor gas concentrations related to the Earth's ozone depletion. To this end, NASA needs compact, solid state, tunable THz local oscillators. THz LOs have been developed using three means: 1) All-electronic LOs using mixers in combination with Gunn oscillators, 2) Hybrid Photo-electronic LOs using a cw analog of the Auston switch, and 3) All-photonic THz LOs using coherent sources, such as vapor lasers or solid-state Quantum Cascade Lasers, and down converting lasers using nonlinear crystals. In this dissertation, we began with two frequency stabilized Nd:YAG lasers, locked to a common reference cavity, as a starting point to having a stable input into a nonlinear optical frequency conversion system. Following this, we explored the nonlinear crystals useful for THz generation, and the phasematching schemes that could be employed by each. We concluded by settling on highly insulating III-V semiconductor crystals as the proper choice of nonlinear element, and put together a new phasematching method that is most useful for them.

Clock and data recovery (CDR) circuit and frequency synthesizer are two essential timing circuits in wireline and wireless communication systems, respectively. With multigigabits/s high speed links and emerging 4G wireless system widely used in communication backbone infrastructures and consumer electronic devices, effective design of CDR and frequency synthesizer has become more and more important. The advanced scaled-down CMOS process has the limitations of leakage current, low supply voltage and process variation which pose great challenge to the analog circuit design. To overcome these issues, a digital intensive CDR solution is needed. Besides, it is desirable for the CDR to cover a wide range of data-rate and to be reference-less for improved flexibility. As for the frequency synthesizer design, the support for multi-standard to reduce the cost and area is desirable. In this work, a digital reference-less CDR is proposed to support continuous datarate ranging from 1 Gbps to 16 Gbps. The CDR adopts an 8 GHz~16 GHz DCO to achieve low random noise performance. A reference-less digital frequency locking loop is included in the system as the acquisition assistance for the CDR loop. To address the difficulty of jitter and stability evaluations for bang-band CDR, a Simulink model is developed to find out the jitter transfer (JTRAN), jitter generation (JGEN) and jitter tolerance (JTOL) performances for the CDR. The prototype CDR is implemented in a 65 nm CMOS process. The core area is 0.68 mm². At 16 Gbps, the CDR consumes a power of 92.5 mW and is able to tolerate a sinusoidal jitter with an amplitude of 0.4 UI and a frequency of 4 MHz. The second part of this dissertation develops a frequency synthesizer for multistandard wireless receivers. The frequency synthesizer is based on an analog fractional-N PLL. Optimally-coupled quadrature voltage-controlled-oscillator (QVCO), dividers and harmonic rejection single sideband mixer (HR-SSBmixer) are combined to synthesize the desired frequency range without posing much phase noise penalty on the QVCO. The QVCO adopts a new phase-shift scheme to improve phase noise and to eliminate bimodal oscillation. Combining harmonic rejection and single sideband mixing, the HR-SSBmixer is developed to suppress spurious signals. Designed in a 0.13-μm CMOS technology, the synthesizer occupies an active area of 1.86 mm² and consumes 35.6 to 52.62 mW of power. Measurement results show that the synthesizer frequency range, the phase noise, the settling time and the spur performances meet the specifications of the wireless receivers for the above standards. For a wide range frequency synthesizer, an automatic frequency calibration circuit (AFC) is needed to select proper oscillator tuning curve before the PLL settling. An improved counter-based AFC is proposed in this dissertation that provides a more robust and faster tuning curve searching process. The proposed AFC adopts a time-to-digital converter (TDC), which is able to captures the fractional VCO cycle information within the counting window, to improve the AFC frequency detection accuracy. The TDC-based AFC is designed in a 0.13-μm CMOS technology. Simulation results show that the TDCbased AFC greatly improves the frequency detection accuracy and consequently for a given frequency detection resolution reduces the AFC calibration time.

The classical structure of an Opto-Electronic Oscillator (OEO) is based on a long fiber loop acting as a delay line and leading to the high spectral purity, or very low phase noise, of the oscillator. Such an OEO has been developed in SATIE/LPQM laboratory at ENS Cachan, operating at 8 GHz frequency. However, this system has some main disadvantages such as a bulky size, the difficulty to control temperature and a wide range of peaks among which it is difficult to select only one mode. In order to eliminate these disadvantages, high quality factor optical resonator can be used instead of the optical fiber loop. In this thesis, two resonator structures are produced and investigated. Microspheres are fabricated based on optical single mode fiber. Whispering gallery modes of these resonators are characterized by tapered fiber -resonator coupling. The experimental results show that the quality factor of the microsphere is up to 106 and FSR depends on the diameter of the resonator. A microsphere with a diameter of 300 µm, presents a FSR of 0.2 nm corresponding to a frequency of 25 GHz. However, for an OEO system which should work at 8 GHz, microsphere with a smaller FSR or with diameter of some millimeters should be fabricated- that is really difficult to obtain. Another add/drop racetrack resonator is designed and investigated. Optical experimental behavior of racetrack is characterized via fiber micro-lens coupling. The transmission spectrum shows resonance dips with average quality factor of 105 and a small FSR of 0.050 ± 0.003 nm (actually corresponding to 6 GHz) for a scanning wavelength range from 1534 nm to 1610 nm. The most promising features of the racetrack resonator are its high quality factor, and its free spectral range, which give it the high suitability for being used in the OEO system. Nevertheless the coupling with fiber lens leads to high losses and it is not possible to fulfill the oscillation conditions. Future work should be conducted for improving the coupling and for controlling the resonance dips position in agreement with the wavelength of the laser used in the OEO.

Communication security is a very important part of modern life. A crucial aspect of security is the ability to identify with near 100% certainty who is on the other side of a connection. This problem can be overcome through the use of random number generators, which create unique identities for each person in a network. The effectiveness of an identity is directly proportional to how random a generator is. The speed at which a random number can be delivered is a critical factor in the design of a random number generator. This thesis covers the design and fabrication of three ring oscillator based truly random number generators, the first two of which were fabricated in 0.13µ m CMOS technology. The randomness from this type of random number generator originates from phase noise in a ring oscillator. The second and third ring oscillators were designed to have a low slew rate at the inverter switching threshold. The outputs of these designs showed vast increases in timing jitter compared to the first design. The third design exhibited improved randomness with respect to the second design.

Electroabsorption modulators (EAMs) are fundamental components in optical communication systems. Their response is governed by a set of parameters inherent to their internal structure and by the external electrical components used to drive them. The first part of this thesis discusses a new method for the extraction of values for these parameters. The use of EAMs as both optical modulators and photodetectors is exploited for the purpose of parameter extraction. The proposed method allows the estimation of the parameters which govern the internal frequency response of EAMs without any knowledge of the characteristics of the electrical interconnect used to drive them. The procedure also removes the need for an accurately calibrated optical transmitter and receiver pair normally used during the characterization of optoelectronic components. Analytic description and experimental verification are presented. In the second part of this thesis, direct demultiplexing of a 10 Gbit/s channel from a 160 Gbit/s optical time division multiplexing (OTDM) signal using a single lumped, electrically driven EAM is experimentally presented for the first time. Direct demultiplexing is made possible by using an electrical driving signal for the EAM consisting of a sum of in-phase harmonics of the base channel rate. The use of a single EAM as an optical gate is quasi-analytically compared with the common approach of cascading two EAMs when performing 160 Gbit/s to 10 Gbit/s demultiplexing. The analysis reveals that the use of a single EAM is beneficial in terms of lower penalty with respect to degradations in the extinction ratio and width of the pulses used in the OTDM signal. The last part of this thesis introduces an electrical distributed oscillator which works in a regime of oscillation similar to that of mode locked laser (MLL) systems. The oscillator offers the flexibility of producing other waveforms not found in MLLs and has the potential to generate the required electrical driving signal for a single EAM OTDM demultiplexer. Other possible applications of the oscillator include the generation of short pulses for use in radar systems and wireless personal area networks. / Thesis (Ph.D, Electrical & Computer Engineering) -- Queen's University, 2011-06-30 14:41:42.625

This thesis focuses on the design and analysis of a novel variable inductor (VID) based VCO solution to the frequency tuning range (TR) limitation of the IEEE 802.11ad compliant radio systems. The IEEE 802.11ad standard has drawn strong attention from the industry as the next generation affordable multi-gigabit speed wireless communication standard. Prepared for the global market, IEEE 802.11ad compliant systems are required to cover a broad 8 GHz TR centered on 60 GHz. This wide TR at V band imposes significant challenge to the VCO design in radio transceivers, and makes the TR of the integrated VCO a major bottleneck to the successful commercialization of many IEEE 802.11ad compliant radio systems today. As an effort to solve the current TR problem for the IEEE 802.11ad compliant radio systems, 2 VCOs designs based on this novel VID-based solution and a conventional Colpitts-Clapp VCO design are presented in this thesis report. The novel VCOs integrate a VID into the differential Colpitts configuration to create a feasible solution to the aforementioned TR problem. The VID in the VCO tank eliminates the base node varactors and their fixed parasitic capacitance that degrades TR in conventional VCO designs, while the differential Colpitts configuration provides advantageous performance at mm-wave frequencies and high output power for real-world applications. Also, a fundamental 30 GHz Colpitts-Clapp VCO was developed in conjunction with the other 2 VCOs for comparison purposes. One of the 2 VID-based VCO designs is a fundamental 30 GHz VID-based Colpitts VCO that covers 17% TR for proof of concept to the novel topology. Another is an IEEE 802.11ad compliant 60 GHz VCO chain consists of the 30 GHz VID-based Colpitts VCO and a frequency doubler covering 17% TR with 3 dBm output power and -115.7 dBc/Hz phase noise at 10 MHz offset. The conventional Colpitts-Clapp VCO is used to compare with the other 2 VID-based VCOs. As the measurement results indicate, this VID-based VCO topology provides a viable solution to overcome the TR bottleneck in the current IEEE 802.11ad compliant VCO development. All 3 VCOs are fabricated using a 130 nm SiGe BiCMOS process. / Thesis (Master, Electrical & Computer Engineering) -- Queen's University, 2014-01-23 13:40:31.258

The need for miniaturized frequency-selective components in electronic systems is clear. The questions are whether and how micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) can satisfy the need. This dissertation aims to address these questions from a scientific perspective. Silicon is the focus of this work, as it can benefit from scaling of the semiconductor industry. Silicon also offers many technical advantages. The characteristics of silicon resonators from 32 kHz to 1 GHz are described. The temperature stability and phase noise of a 6-MHz temperature-compensated oscillator and a 100-MHz temperature-controlled oscillator are reported. Silicon resonator design and characterization, with a focus on quality factor, linearity, and the electrical equivalent circuit, are included. Electrical tuning, electromechanical coupling, finite element modeling, and unexpected findings of these resonators are also described. A manufacturability technique employing batch process compensation is demonstrated. Results indicate that silicon is an excellent material for micromechanical resonators. The aim of this research is to explore the fundamental limitations, provide a foundation for future work, and also paint a clearer picture on how micromechanical resonators can complement alternative technologies.

Thesis (MScEng (Electrical and Electronic Engineering))--University of Stellenbosch, 2010. / Thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree Master of Science in Engineering at the University of Stellenbosch / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: In 1966, D.B. Leeson presented his model on phase noise in a letter entitled A Simple Model of Feedback Oscillator Noise Spectrum. This model usually requires an additional e ffective noise figure in order to conform with measured results. (This e ffective noise fi gure has to be determined by means of curve-fi tting Leeson's model with the measured results.) The model is, however, relatively simple to use, compared with other more accurate phase noise models that have since been developed and which can only be solved numerically with the aid of computers. It also gives great insight regarding component choices during the design process. Therefore several experiments were conducted in order to determine conditions under which Leeson's model may be considered valid and accurate. These experiments, as well as the conclusions drawn from their results, are discussed in this document. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: In 1966 stel D.B. Leeson sy faseruis model bekend in 'n brief getiteld A Simple Model of Feedback Oscillator Noise Spectrum. Hierdie model vereis gewoonlik die gebruik van 'n bykomende e ektiewe ruissyfer, sodat die model ooreenstem met die gemete resultate. (Hierdie e ektiewe ruissyfer kan slegs bepaal word deur middel van krommepassings tussen Leeson se model en die gemete resultate.) Die model is egter relatief eenvoudig om te gebruik in teenstelling met ander, meer akkurate, faseruis modelle wat sedertdien ontwikkel is en slegs met behulp van rekenaars opgelos kan word. Dit bied ook onoortre ike insig ten opsigte van komponent keuses tydens die ontwerpsproses. Om hierdie rede is verskeie eksperimente uitgevoer met die doel om toestande te identi seer waaronder Leeson se model as geldig en akkuraat geag kan word. Hierdie eksperimente, asook die gevolgtrekkings wat van hul resultate gemaak is, word in hierdie dokument behandel.

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A life cycle of many known algae is influenced by the circadian clock. It seems probable that also Chromera velia, the closest known photosynthetic relative to Apicomplexa, uses circadian oscillator. We tested, if fluctuating of zoospore?s abundance is driven by the circadian clock. This rhythm is stable even in the constant light condition. Furthermore, three cryptochrome genes, involved in circadian rhythms, were sequenced and consequently phylogenetically investigated. Two of them were classified as CRY-DASH, the third is CRY-DASH-like. The rhythmicity of CRY-DASH expression in C. velia was also investigated. The level of expression was also tested under constant light and dark condition. It was suggested that expression of these genes is associated with the circadian oscillator. This is the first study of the circadian clock in C. velia.