Course Description

All inversion regions radio-frequency (RF) design

Course given by Fernando Silveira, electrical Engineering Department, Universidad de la Republica, Montevideo, Uruguay.

Louvain-la-Neuve, August 29th, Shannon Room (A105, Maxwell building)

This short course summarizes the research results and on-going research on the application of the gm/ID methodology and new methodologies inspired from it, to RF circuit blocks. The results presented are related to the work done in four PhD theses (two finished and two on-going) and international collaborations.

The course will cover :

• Overview of the gm/ID methodology at RF in advanced CMOS process. Design flows for VCOs (Fiorelli et al, IEEE TMTT 2011) and LNAs (Fiorelli et al, IEEE TMTT 2014)
• Extensions of the methodology to circuitrs with non-linear operation : Class A-to-C Power Amplifiers, including reliability aspects (Barabino et al, IEEE ISCAS 2010, Pazos et al, Microelectronics Reliability 2018) and Envelope Detector for Wake-up Receivers (Reyes et al, SBCCI 2015, IEEE NEWCAS 2018, IEEE ISICAS / TCAS2 2019 (to appear)).

Short biography

Fernando Silveira received the electrical engineering degree from Universidad de la Republica, Montevideo, Uruguay, in 1990, and the M.Sc. and Ph.D.degrees in microelectronics from Université catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, in 1995 and 2002, respectively. He is currently a Professor with the Electrical Engineering Department, Universidad de la Republica. His research interests include the design of ultra-low-power analog and RF integrated circuits and systems, in particular with biomedical application. In this field, he has co-authored one book and many technical papers.  He has had multiple industrial activities including leading the design of an application specified integrated circuit for implantable pacemakers and designing analog cirtcuit modules for implantable devices for various companies worldwide, field in which he continues to do consulting.  He was member of the Technical Advisory Board of Gtronics, Inc, USA from 2006 to 2010, received the "Ingeniero Destacado" (Distinguished Engineer) award by the Uruguayan Association of Engineers in 2007 and was a member for 2011-2012 of the Distinguished Lecturers Program of the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society.

Venue

September 3rd, 9 am, Shannon Room, A105 Maxwell building, Place du levant 3, Louvain-la-Neuve

Tentative Schedule :

 (It is likely that some of the parts could be covered in less time and the total time is reduced a bit).

9:00 to 10:30:

I.               Brief review of (very) basic ideas on RF design

II.         All Inversion Regions MOS Circuit Design (Small Signal) Basics

Inversion Regions

gm/ID Methodology

Existence of Consumption Optimum

 Break

11:00 to 12:30

III.        gm/ID in nanometer process, transistor and passives modeling for RF design

Lunch

14:00 to 15:30

IV.        Optimization by Design Space Exploration of RF Blocks

                                    Low Noise Amplifier (LNA, Small Signal)

Voltage Controlled Oscillator (VCO, approx. Small Signal)

Power Amplifier (PA, Large Signal)

Break

16:00 to 17:00

IV. Optimization by Design Space Exploration of RF Blocks (cont.)

Power Amplifier (PA, Large Signal), Reliability aspects.

Envelope Detector (ED, Non linear)

 Registration

Free but mandatory on https://sites.uclouvain.be/doctoralschool-musics/CoursesList?view=item&id=427303755