RF CMOS

In this course, the students will come into contact with the problems associated with the analysis and design of CMOS integrated circuits at radio frequencies (RF). The students will become familiar with modeling of the most important active and passive devices at RF. They will learn how to model device and circuit noise at RF and analyze RF circuits for their distortion performance. Basic receiver architectures will be discussed and analyzed concerning their advantages and disadvantages. Front-end circuits will be discussed on transistor level. Different oscillator circuits will be analyzed and compared concerning their phase noise performance. Basic frequency synthesizer architectures will be discussed. Finally, different power amplifier topologies will be analyzed and compared concerning their linearity, peak power and power efficiency.

The course contains lecture and exercise sessions. The lecture titles are as below:

• Background: overview of wireless principles
• Modeling of active and passive devices at RF: MOS transistors, integrated resistors, capacitors and inductors
• Noise at RF: classical noisy two-port theory’; examples of noise calculations in RF circuits
• Distortion and intermodulation: origin of distortion; characterization of distortion at RF, intermodulation, intercept points
• Basic receiver architectures: super-heterodyne; low-IF; direct conversion, super-regenerative
• Front-end circuits: low-noise amplifiers (LNA) designs, mixers
• Oscillators: basic tuned oscillators (Colpitts, Pierce, Clapp, cross-coupled); phase noise
• Frequency synthesizers: basic frequency synthesizers
• RF Power Amplifiers: class A, AB, B, and C power amplifiers, class D, E and F amplifiers

Besides recommended books for the lectures, additional list of recommended current research papers will be announced at the beginning of each term.

• Lecture: Prof. Jens Anders
• Exercise: M. Sc. Hassan Hayeri, M. Sc. Sogol Khanof
• Module description, contents, and timetable in C@mpus
• Lecture notes in ILIAS