CMOS integrated transceiver technologies for low-power and high-frequency applications

Abstract

This dissertation covers CMOS integrated transceiver (TRX) technologies for low-power and high-frequency applications. In the case of low-power TRX technologies, highly efficient 900 MHz and wideband internet-of-things (IoT) TXs are presented. The 900 MHz IoT TX allows to save the power consumption at the frequency synthesizer by adopting a frequency tripling scheme. The 0.3~1 GHz IoT TX achieves wideband operation and high-data rate by employing an open-loop phase switching BFSK modulator with pseudo-randomized phase transition time and 4-level single-supply harmonic rejection power amplifier. Moreover, we also introduce the high efficiency current-mode digital power amplifier that is highly required in low-power TRX. The current-mode digital power amplifier enhances power back-off efficiency with single-supply and single core by proposing an output power scaling technique. In the case of high-frequency TRX technologies, we present low-power/high sensitivity/fully-integrated 490 GHz RX adopting a dual-locking receiver-based frequency-locked loop (DL-RBFLL) for THz imaging application. The proposed DL-RBFLL saves the power consumption by reusing the existing blocks in RX instead of the power hungry blocks such as dividers and buffers operating at sub-THz.