Fourth Year Projects for 2012-2013

Group Project in Radio Frequency and Analog Design

As in previous years, it is expected that this will be joint between students reporting to Prof. Plett and Prof. Rogers.

As in previous years we expect to be working on a radio circuit. Unlike previous years, we hope to be able to do the full integration at Carleton University so that our target will be to have a working prototype by the end of the project. The process available to us at Carleton university would likely not allow us to do designs at multiple GHz, but it should be possible to build a radio operating at some hundreds of MHz, for example in the FM radio band.

We haven't finalized the exact frequency range and application yet, but other than that, the projects will be similar to previous years so reading last year's description, listed below, will give you a good idea of what to expect.

Last year, (2011-2012), students worked on a 2.6 GHz radio - this is a frequency used for a particular variation of LTE or 4G radio so students were able to say they were working on components relevant to the next generation of cell phone.

Students started by exploring the architecture and the required tools with help from the professors and some of their graduate students. Then from a list of possible components, students chose particular components to work on as the main focus of their work. For 2011-2012, there were three students that worked on the following three parts:

  1. a low noise amplifier (LNA) that picks up the small signal from the antenna and amplifies it without adding too much noise, then passes it on to the mixer.
  2. a passive downconverting mixer that takes the RF signal from the LNA and mixes it with a local oscillator signal, with the output at baseband.
  3. A power amplifier that amplifies the RF signal to sufficient power to be transmitted by the antenna.
After selecting the parts, these components were further explored and implemented as an integrated circuit in a commercial 130 nm process using industry standard tools. Steps included schematic level design and simulation, layout, and extraction of parasitics from the layout to obtain a more accurate simulation. Monte Carlo simulations were run to determine the effect of process variations and mismatch between components. Finally the intention was for all students to combine their blocks to form a complete transceiver.

By comparson, in 2010-2011, six students built components for an ultrawideband transceiver. The particular components developed by the students were:

  1. a 3-5 GHz LNA,
  2. a broadband mixer,
  3. a 1 Gs/s A/D converter,
  4. a PA operating from 3 to 5 GHz,
  5. a PA operating from 6-10.6 GHz,
  6. a 16 GHz oscillator.

Examples of other components that could have been chosen would have been the integrated baseband filters, a D/A converter, and frequency synthesizer components.

In earlier years, other topics have included 60 GHz radio, wireless LAN, and Bluetooth radio.

Description from an earlier year.

While cellular and WLAN applications are some of the best known applications for radio frequency integrated circuits (RFICs), another very active area that has generated much interest is the design ultra wide band (UWB) systems for personal area networks (PAN) and other low power applications. Unlike narrow band wireless applications, UWB systems must handle many signals simultaneously over a wide frequency range.

Students in the project will be responsible for the design of a high frequency (either in the 3-10GHz range or in the 60GHz range) circuit building block and may also be expected to participate in designing the radio architecture. The circuit blocks will be designed in either a 130nm or 65nm state of the art CMOS process, using the same tools used in industry.

This project will make use of the skills students have developed in ELEC 2507, and ELEC 3509. Enrollment in courses such as ELEC 4505, and ELEC 4707 will provide additional background for the project. This project will be run jointly with Professor Rogers.