Fourth Year Projects for 1999-2000

Group Project in CMOS Radio Frequency Circuit Design

Students will design a radio transceiver in 0.35 micron CMOS. This will involve a significant amount of time to become familiar with RF circuits, the CMOS process and the simulation and layout tools. Students will work as a group, but will also be responsible for individual parts which make up the transceiver. Parts could include the low-noise amplifier, image-reject filter, mixer, oscillator, synthesizer, and power amplifier. If good progress is made on the radio, or if individual parts look very promising then actual fabrication through the Canadian Microelectronics Corporation will be considered towards the end of the school year.

This project assumes a good understanding of background theory as provided by the third year courses, Electronics II (97.359) and Communications (94.351). Further theory will be provided by some of the fourth-year courses.

Details on some of the components, Others will be added later

1. Radio Frequency Mixer Design

In a radio-frequency front end, the incoming signal at the radio frequency (RF) is converted to the intermdediate frequency (IF) by mixing with a local oscillator (LO) signal. Thus the mixer inputs are the RF and LO signals and the output is the IF signal. Typically, many RF signals may exist, but only one is desired. This means that one of the main concerns in a mixer is linearity of the RF input to prevent intermodulations between various input signals. Other issues of importance are frequency response, power dissipation and noise.

This project will begin with a study of different types of mixers. The study will involve simulation with a combination of HPEESOF and SPICE to evaluate the linearity, and other specifications of the different structures. Then a particular design will be chosen for detailed analysis and design, followed by implementation and test.

This projects assume a good understanding of background theory as provided by the third year courses, Electronics II (97.359) and Communications (94.351). Further theory is provided by some of the first-term fourth-year courses.

3. Radio Frequency Power Amplifier Design

Power amplifiers are used to drive the antenna on the transmit side. Difficulties in design are achieving high enough power while using a battery as a power supply. High efficiency is important in order to maximize life of the battery. Different classes of amplifiers (from class A through class F) can be chosen with different tradeoffs between efficiency, linearity and simplicity of design.

This project will begin with a study of the different classes and types of power amplifiers. This will be followed by simulation, probably with HPEESOF, to determine which type of amplfier results in the highest efficiency and what the tradeoffs are. Then, a particular design, or combination of designs will be chosen for detailed analyis and design, followed by implementation and test.