Delft University of Technology Power Efficient RF/mm-wave Oscillators and Power Amplifiers for

226 Pages·2017·26.3 MB·English

Delft University of Technology

Power Efficient RF/mm-wave Oscillators and Power Amplifiers for Wireless Applications
Babaie, Masoud
DOI
10.4233/uuid:456a2f0e-529d-4bd8-91e0-4dba4f623f0f
Publication date
2016
Document Version
Final published version
Citation (APA)
Babaie, M. (2016). Power Efficient RF/mm-wave Oscillators and Power Amplifiers for Wireless Applications.
https://doi.org/10.4233/uuid:456a2f0e-529d-4bd8-91e0-4dba4f623f0f
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Power Efficient RF/mm-wave
Oscillators and Power Amplifiers for
Wireless Applications
Masoud Babaie

Power Efficient RF/mm-wave
Oscillators and Power Amplifiers for
Wireless Applications
Proefschrift
ter verkrijging van de graad van doctor
aan de Technische Universiteit Delft,
op gezag van de Rector Magnificus prof. ir. K.C.A.M. Luyben;
voorzitter van het College voor Promoties,
in het openbaar te verdedigen op
donderdag 9 juni 2016 om 12.30 uur
door
Masoud BABAIE
Master of Science in Electrical Engineering,
Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran
geboren te Teheran, Iran
This dissertation has been approved by the
promotor: Prof. dr. R. B. Staszewski
Composition of the doctoral committee:
Rector Magnificus chairman
Prof. dr. R. B. Staszewski Delft University of Technology
Independent members:
Prof. dr. E. Charbon Delft University of Technology
Prof. dr. ir. B. Nauta University of Twente
Prof. dr. ir. P. Reynaert University of Leuven, Belgium
Prof. dr. ing. S. Heinen RWTH Aachen University, Germany
Prof. dr. P. Wambacq Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium
Dr. J. Craninckx IMEC, Leuven, Belgium
Prof. dr. ir. W. A. Serdijn Delft University of Technology, reserve member
Masoud Babaie,
Power Efficient RF/mm-wave Oscillators and Power Amplifiers for Wireless Applications,
Ph.D. Thesis Delft University of Technology,
with summary in Dutch.
Keywords: RF, mm-wave, transmitter, oscillator, class-F, phase noise, impulse sensitivity
function, switched-mode power amplifier, class-E/F, transformer, Bluetooth Low Energy, low
voltage, low power, all-digital phase-locked loop (ADPLL).
ISBN 978-94-6233-305-5
Copyright © 2016 by Masoud Babaie
Cover photo was taken from www.hdwpics.com.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the copyright
owner.
Printed in the Netherlands.
To my lovely parents, Mahmoud and Shahin
To my lovely brothers, Saeed and Kasra
And last, but not least, to my lovely wife Mina and her respected family
“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
Albert Einstein, 1879-1955
Contents
Contents i
1 Introduction 1
1.1 Technology Scaling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.1.1 Supply Voltage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.1.2 Quality Factor of Passives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.1.3 Noise of Active Devices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.2 Thesis Objectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.3 Thesis Outline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.4 Original Contributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
2 A Class-F CMOS Oscillator 9
2.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2.2 Evolution Towards Class-F Oscillator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
2.2.1 Realizing a Square-Wave across the LC Tank . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
2.2.2 Proposed Tank . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
2.2.3 Voltage Gain of the Tank . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
2.2.4 Proposed Class-F Oscillator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
2.3 Class-F Phase Noise Performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
2.3.1 Quality Factor of Transformer-based Resonator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
2.3.2 Phase Noise Mechanism in Class-F Oscillator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
2.3.3 Class-F Operation Robustness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
2.4 Experimental Results. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
2.4.1 Implementation Details . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
2.4.2 Measurement Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
2.5 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
2.6 Extension of class-F operation to mm-wave frequency generation . . . . . . . . . 33
3
3 An All-Digital PLL Based on Class-F DCO for 4G Phones 37
3.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
3.2 Time-to-Digital Converter (TDC) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
3.3 ADPLL Architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
3.4 Digitally Controlled Oscillator (DCO) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
i
ii Contents
3.5 Measurement Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
3.6 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
4 An Ultra-Low Phase Noise Class-F CMOS Oscillator with 191 dBc/Hz FoM
2
and Long-Term Reliability 49
4.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
4.2 Challenges in Ultra-Low Phase Noise Oscillators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
4.3 Evolution Towards Class-F Operation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
2
4.4 Phase Noise Mechanism in Class-F Oscillator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
2
4.5 Experimental Results. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
4.6 Reliability of High-Swing RF Oscillators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
4.7 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
4.8 Extension of class-F operation for reducing flicker noise upconversion . . . . . . 72
2
5 Comprehensive Analysis of Switch-mode PAs 77
5.1 Predicting Switching Amplifier Waveforms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
5.2 Determining ZVS and ZdVS Tuning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
5.3 Waveform Figure of Merit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
5.4 Technology Dependent Parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
5.5 Predicting Switching Amplifier Performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
5.6 Effects of Oxide Breakdown on PA Performance. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
5.7 Single Device Versus Cascode Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
5.8 Benefits of Non-zero Voltage Switching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
5.9 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
6 A Wideband 60GHz Class-E/F Power Amplifier in 40nm CMOS 105
2
6.1 Transmitter Architectures from mm-wave Viewpoint . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
6.2 Optimizing Active Devices at mm-wave Frequencies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
6.3 Power Amplifier Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
6.3.1 Amplifier Configuration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
6.3.2 Output Matching Network . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
6.3.3 Output Matching Network Behavior to DM and CM Input Signals . . . . 119
6.3.4 Extended Class-E/F PA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
2
6.3.5 Effects of CM Resistive Loss on PA’s Performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
6.3.6 Optimum Output Matching Network and Device Size . . . . . . . . . . . 124
6.3.7 Low/Moderate Coupling-Factor Transformer for Wideband PAs. . . . . . 128
6.3.8 Driver Stage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
6.3.9 First Stage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
6.3.10 Effects of Dummy Metals on Transformer’s Performance . . . . . . . . . . 133
6.3.11 Power Amplifier Stability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
6.4 Measurement Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
6.5 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
Contents iii
7 Bluetooth-Low Energy Transmitter 143
7.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
7.2 Switching Current-Source DCO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
7.2.1 Oscillator Power Consumption Tradeoffs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
7.2.2 Switching Current Source Oscillator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
7.2.3 Thermal Noise Upconversion in The Proposed Oscillator . . . . . . . . . . 153
7.2.4 1/f Noise Upconversion in The Proposed Oscillator . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
7.2.5 Optimizing Transformer-based Tank . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
7.3 Class-E/F Switched-mode Power Amplifier . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
2
7.3.1 Efficiency and Selectivity Tradeoff in Transformer-based Matching Network158
7.3.2 Impedance Transformation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
7.3.3 Class-E/F Operation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
2
7.4 All-Digital Phase-Locked Loop and Transmitter Architecture . . . . . . . . . . . 163
7.5 Experimental Results. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
7.6 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
7.7 Appendix A . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
7.8 Appendix B . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
8 Conclusion 173
8.1 The Thesis Outcome . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
8.2 Some Suggestions for Future Developments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174
Bibliography 177
List of Publications 191
Summary 195
Samenvatting 197
Chip Micrograph Gallery 199
List of Figures 200
List of Tables 209
Acknowledgments 211
About the Author 215