| dc.description.abstract | Research on the nonlinear monolithic microwave integrated (MMIC) circuits using injection-locking technique is presented in this dissertation. A broadband class-E power amplifier (PA) using a reactance compensation technique is proposed using a 0.5-m GaAs enhancement/depletion pseudomorphic high-electron mobility transistor (E/D-mode PHEMT) process in Chapter 2. By using the reactance compensation technique, the bandwidth of the proposed class-E PA can achieves 87%. This is the first fully integrated microwave class-E PA with the reactance compensation technique, and also this work demonstrates the highest figure-of-merit (FOM) with the 3-dB bandwidth among all the reported fully integrated PAs. To further mitigate the input driving power, a two-stage broadband injection-locking class-E PA using a 0.5-m GaAs E/D-mode PHEMT process are also presented. The PA works as an oscillator whose output voltage is tuned at the input frequency. The proposed injection-locking PA achieves high power added efficiency (PAE) and high power gain. Besides, an autonomous circuit is also employed for nonlinear stability analysis, and the design procedure is summarized for the circuit implementation. Moreover, the proposed PA with Gaussian minimum-shift keying (GMSK) and 64-QAM modulation signals still demonstrates good performance, and it is suitable for the digital modulation schemes.
A 2.5-GHz class-E power oscillator (POSC) using a finite dc-feed inductance is proposed using a 0.5-m GaAs E/D-mode PHEMT process. The analysis of the class-E load network using finite dc-feed inductance is presented, and a systematic design procedure for the class-E POSC is developed. The class-E load network can be further operated above the class-E maximum frequency (fmax,E) as the core device is operated in the saturated region. Moreover, a 24-GHz class-E POSC using a 0.15-m GaAs E/D-mode PHEMT process is present in Chapter 3. The measured results of the two proposed class-E POSCs compared with the recently reported state-of-the-art POSCs are also summarized in this dissertation.
With a ring self-injection technique, an eight-phase voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) with eight reflection-type modulators is presented in Chapter 4. The amplitude and phase errors can be easily and accurately evaluated using the proposed topology, because the reflection-type modulators can be performed as a switch or an amplitude-phase modulator. This technique will be further applied to the characterizations of other multi-phase VCOs. A self-injection-coupled quadrature voltage-controlled oscillator (SIC-QVCO) using a standard bulk 0.18-m complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) process has been successfully demonstrated. The proposed QVCO using a modified SIC method has a few advantages of low dc consumption and low phase noise. As compared with the previously reported state-of-the-art QVCOs, this SIC-QVCO features the lowest FOMs and phase noise. Besides, to further test the potential of the SIC technique in millimeter-wave (MMW) band, a 60-GHz SIC-QVCO using a 90-nm CMOS process has also been successfully designed and implemented. From these demonstrations, we can see that the proposed SIC method is suitable for the circuit designs of high performance QVCOs and multi-phase VCOs.
In Chapter 5, design and analysis of a two-stage cascade low noise amplifier (LNA) and bottom-series self-injection quadrature voltage-controlled oscillator (BS-QVCO) using a 65-nm CMOS dual-gate device are presented. A small-signal equivalent circuit of the dual-gate device is investigated for bandwidth. Besides, a mechanism of the quadrature signal generation using the dual-gate device is presented for the proposed QVCO design. By using the dual-gate device, the two-stage cascade LNA achieves wide 3-dB bandwidth with high gian and low noise figure, and the BS-QVCO also demonstrates good phase noise and good quadrature accuracy. The dual-gate CMOS device is suitable for the circuit design of high performance LNAs, QVCO, and other RF circuits above 20 GHz, especially for MMW applications. Finally, we summarize the concolusion and the future works in Chapter 6. | en_US |