The rapid growth of the market for short-range wireless devices, with standards such as Bluetooth and Wireless LAN (IEEE 802.11) being the most important, has created a need for highly integrated transceivers that target drastic power and area reduction while providing a high level of integration. The radio section of the devices designed to establish communications using these standards is the limiting factor for the power reduction efforts. A key building block in a transceiver is the frequency synthesizer, since it operates at the highest frequency of the system and consumes a very large portion of the total power in the radio. This dissertation presents the basic theory and a design methodology of frequency synthesizers targeted for short-range wireless applications. Three different examples of synthesizers are presented. First a frequency synthesizer integrated in a Bluetooth receiver fabricated in 0.35μm CMOS technology. The receiver uses a low-IF architecture to downconvert the incoming Bluetooth signal to 2MHz. The second synthesizer is integrated within a dual-mode receiver capable of processing signals of the Bluetooth and Wireless LAN (IEEE 802.11b) standards. It is implemented in BiCMOS technology and operates the voltage controlled oscillator at twice the required frequency to generate quadrature signals through a divide-by-two circuit. A phase switching prescaler is featured in the synthesizer. A large capacitance is integrated on-chip using a capacitance multiplier circuit that provides a drastic area reduction while adding a negligible phase noise contribution. The third synthesizer is an extension of the second example. The operation range of the VCO is extended to cover a frequency band from 4.8GHz to 5.85GHz. By doing this, the synthesizer is capable of generating LO signals for Bluetooth and IEEE 802.11a, b and g standards. The quadrature output of the 5 - 6 GHz signal is generated through a first order RC - CR network with an automatic calibration loop. The loop uses a high frequency phase detector to measure the deviation from the 90° separation between the I and Q branches and implements an algorithm to minimize the phase errors between the I and Q branches and their differential counterparts.

Phase Locked Loop (PLL) is an integral component of clock generation circuits. A third order Charge Pump PLL (CPPLL) is most widely employed PLL architecture due to its zero steady state phase error. A monolithic implementation of such a CPPLL presents numerous challenges to PLL designers, the number of such challenges vary depending on the process technology employed and the end application. One such challenge that is worth mentioning is the on-chip integration of the second order passive loop filter. The area occupied by the second order passive loop filter is mainly determined by the zero determining capacitance (CZ). A low loop bandwidth CPPLL has a higher CZ value, and hence consumes a larger die area than a large loop bandwidth CPPLL. Literature survey shows that the problem of higher CZ value in low loop bandwidth CPPLL is addressed by using some form of emulation techniques. A relatively simpler emulation technique is the use of dual charge pump based loop filter. Existing dual charge pump based loop filter consume extra elements (such as summer that need opamps to realize the summer function) for achieving low CZ value. These extra elements consume extra area and additional power. We present two types of Summer-Less Dual Charge Pump (SDCP) based loop filter designs that do not need extra elements and still achieves low CZ value and this is achieved by using a second charge pump in an appropriate way. A test chip was implemented in 0.13µm UMC MMRFCMOS process to verify the presented circuits. The presented SDCP based loop filter circuits are particularly useful in designs employing multiple CPPLL’s and design employing low loop bandwidth CPPLL’s. Another challenge worth-mentioning is the frequency ranges over which the PLL can be locked. The Voltage Controlled Oscillator (VCO) of PLL mainly determines the frequency locking range of a PLL. A typical VCO has a frequency locking range of usually 1:2 to 1:3. The VCO frequency tuning range reduces with reduction in supply voltage. This poses a serious problem in low supply voltage applications that demand a wide frequency locking range, sometimes greater than 1:3. We have addressed this problem of wide PLL lock range, by using an Analog Frequency Detector. A wide frequency lock range is achieved, either by dynamically modifying the VCO or the feedback divider of PLL. Both the approaches are equally feasible. The frequency detector is used for dynamically modifying the VCO or the feedback divider of PLL. Two test chips were implemented to verify the presented Analog Frequency Detector scheme. A testchip implemented in 0.25µm CSM analog process achieves wide frequency lock range by dynamically modifying the feedback divider of PLL. Another testchip implemented in 0.13µm UMC MMRFCMOS process achieves wide frequency lock range by dynamically modifying the center frequency of the VCO. Presented analog frequency detection scheme is particularly useful in applications that demand wide PLL lock range from a single die.

The thesis uses an up-down conversion architecture to realize a wideband frequency synthesizer for digital video broadcasting (DVB) transmission system. At first, the theoretical analysis of this architecture is performed to understand the mechanism to suppress the phase noise in an optimal way. Then, the simulations using Matlab and ADS are carried out to predict the phase noise performance. Based on the above efforts, a 50 MHz ~ 1 GHz wideband frequency synthesizer hybrid circuit is implemented and its phase noise performance, corresponding to different choices of the reference sources, is finally discussed. The second part of this thesis is to extend the up-down conversion architecture to an offset phase-locked loop (PLL) architecture for wideband frequency synthesizers. The difference from the conventional offset PLLs is the phase locking of the signal at either the sum or the difference frequency of two voltage-controlled oscillators (VCOs) to the reference source for the purpose of wideband operation. The phase noise analysis of the proposed offset PLL architecture is provided. In the experiments, a 300 MHz ~ 3.6 GHz wideband frequency synthesizer hybrid circuit is implemented to verify the analyzed phase noise results. In addition, a CMOS wideband frequency synthesizer chip using the proposed offset PLL architecture has been realized. Moreover, another two CMOS wideband frequency synthesizer chips are included in this thesis. It is worth mentioning that the VCOs in these two frequency synthesizer chips use the switched capacitor and inductor techniques to achieve a wideband operation.

A Rail to Rail Differential Control Delay Line using multi-band technology can provide wider range on a delay-locked loop (DLL) is proposed in this thesis. Delay-Locked Loops (DLLs) have been widely used for clock deskew instead of Phase-Locked Loop (PLLs) because of easy design and inherent stable. The main object of this thesis is the description and discussion in Delay-Locked Loop and Rail to Rail Differential Control Delay Line; uses TSMC 0.18£gm 1P6M CMOS process to design a 70 MHz¡ã750 MHz DLL and the supply voltage is 1.8V. This thesis is characterized by utilizing rail to rail input to reduce noise interference and enhance the signal integrity¡]low distortion, low noise, low power and high gain¡^.By the phase selection circuit is used to extend operation frequency. The operate frequency range of DLL is 70MHz to 750MHz, the power consumption of the Entire system is less than 32mW. The phase error is 10 ps at 70MHz and <10 ps at 750MHz in lock. The proposed DLL can provide wider range and lower jitter in this thesis.

The first topic of this thesis presents a novel VGA (variable gain amplifier) design which is applied in the AGC (automatic gain control) loop of digital video broadcasting - terrestrial (DVB-T) receivers. A total of three digital variable gain amplifiers (DVGA) are cascaded to provide a 70 dB dynamic range and 95 MHz operation frequency. The proposed digital VGA implemented by 0.35um 2P4M CMOS technology possesses 70 dB dynamic tuning range with a 0.3 dB gain error and 95 MHz bandwidth, and the power consumption is found to be 32.7 mW given a 3.3 V power supply. The second topic presents a design of a 60 ps peak-to-peak jitter, 80MHz, phase-locked loop (PLL) circuit for DVB-T receivers. The simulation results using the TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manu-facturing Company) 0.35um 2P4M CMOS process show that the proposed PLL achieves as low as 60 ps peak-to-peak jitter when the output frequency is 80 MHz and the power consumption is merely 10.5 mW given a 3.3 V power supply.

The first topic of the thesis presents an NTSC digital video decoder which is designed by using two lines delay comb filter to decode the luminance signal (Y) and the chrominance signal (C). The coefficients of the low pass filter are tuned properly to reduce the gate count without losing any original performance of the chroma demodulator. The second topic of the thesis is to propose a method and a circuitry to resolve the out-of-phase problem between the color burst and the sub-carrier in NTSC TV receivers. The feature of the method is that a delay means is inserted which leads to the synchronization of the color burst and the sub-carrier such that the following color demodulator is able to extract right color signals. Besides, the locking of the two signals will be fastened without any extra large circuit cost.

This thesis is composed of three parts. In the first part, analysis and discussion of phase noise in phase-locked loop is made. Because OFDM upconverter requires high phase noise performance, we therefore study the mechanism of noise suppression in a proposed dual phase-locked loop, and then derive the formula to predict the circuit characteristics. In the second part, experiment and simulation of a dual phase-locked loop is performed for comparison. The experiment uses hybrid circuit combined with related equipment and components to measure the noise suppression characteristics in a dual phase-locked loop. The simulation relies on the component behavioral model in ADS. Comparison between simulation and measurement shows good agreement. In the third part, this thesis carries out a 1.55¡V2.3 GHz frequency synthesizer RFIC design for DVB up-down architecture using TSMC 0.18£gm CMOS process. The test results validate the chip design.

Cooling fans, widely used in desktop and laptop computers, have been designed toward the tendency of low noise and low consumption power. This thesis purposes a efficient low-noise double-loop control method to regulate the fan speed according to environmental temperature. The proposed controller consists of three parts. The first part is a command generator which generates a train of pulses with its frequency varying proportionally with temperature. The second part is a phase locked loop which intends to synchronize the command pulses with the pulses fed back from the Hall IC of the motor. The third part is an inner loop quantized control that switches the fan according to the error signal sent by the phase locked loop. This double-loop design of feedback achieves accurate fan speed regulation with the nice properties of low noise and high efficiency. The experimental results show an average regulation error of 0.4188% in the fan speed range of 306.6~1953 R.P.M which corresponds to the temperature range 10~70 Celsius.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Texas at Arlington, 2009.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2001. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 68-72).