• ETRI Journal
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.234-236
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• 2009

We present a novel operational amplifier preset technique for a switched-capacitor circuit to reduce the acquisition time by improving the slewing. The acquisition time of a variable gain amplifier (VGA) using the proposed technique is reduced by 30% compared with a conventional one; therefore, the power consumption of the VGA is decreased. For additional power reduction, a programmable capacitor array scheme is used in the VGA. In the 0.13 ${\mu}m$ CMOS process, the VGA, which consists of three-stages, occupies 0.33 $mm^2$ and dissipates 19.2 mW at 60 MHz with a supply voltage of 1.2 V. The gain range is 36.03 dB, which is controlled by a 10-bit control word with a gain error of ${\pm}0.68$ LSB.

• Journal of Semiconductor Engineering
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• v.1 no.3
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• pp.81-87
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• 2020

An instrumentation amplifier (IA) and an analog-to-digital converter (ADC) are essential circuit blocks for accurate and robust sensor readout systems. This paper introduces recent advances in radiation-hardening by design (RHBD) techniques applied for the sensor readout integrated circuits (IC), e.g., the three-op-amp IA and the successive-approximation register (SAR) ADC, operating against total ionizing dose (TID) and singe event effect (SEE) in harsh radiation environments. The radiation-hardened IA utilized TID monitoring and adaptive reference control to compensate for transistor parameter variations due to radiation effects. The radiation-hardened SAR ADC adopts delay-based double-feedback flip-flops to prevent soft errors which flips the data bits. Radiation-hardened IA and ADC were verified through compact model simulation, and fabricated CMOS chips were measured in radiation facilities to confirm their radiation tolerance.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.322-329
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• 2007

A single pixel photon counting type image sensor which is applicable for medical diagnosis with digitally obtained image and industrial purpose has been designed with $0.18{\mu}m$ triple-well CMOS process. The designed single pixel for readout chip is able to be operated by single supply voltage to simplify digital X-ray image sensor module and a preamplifier which is consist of folded cascode CMOS operational amplifier has been designed to enlarge signal voltage(${\Delta}Vs$), the output voltage of preamplifier. And an externally tunable threshold voltage generator circuit which generates threshold voltage in the readout chip has been newly proposed against the conventional external threshold voltage supply. In addition, A dark current compensation circuit for reducing dark current noise from photo diode is proposed and 15bit LFSR(Linear Feedback Shift Resister) Counter which is able to have high counting frequency and small layout area is designed.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.330-336
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• 2007

A single pixel photon counting type image sensor which is applicable for medical diagnosis with digitally obtained image and industrial purpose has tern designed with $0.18{\mu}m$ triple-well CMOS process. The designed single pixel for readout chip is able to be operated by single supply voltage to simplify digital X-ray image sensor module and a preamplifier which is consist of folded cascode CMOS operational amplifier has been designed to enlarge signal voltage(${\Delta}Vs$), the output voltage of preamplifier. And an externally tunable threshold voltage generator circuit which generates threshold voltage in the readout chip has been newly proposed against the conventional external threshold voltage supply. In addition, A dark current compensation circuit for reducing dark current noise from photo diode is proposed and 15bit LFSR(Linear Feedback Shift Resister) Counter which is able to have high counting frequency and small layout area is designed.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics and Information Engineers
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• v.51 no.10
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• pp.57-63
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• 2014

This paper proposes an architecture of $3^{rd}$ order SDM(Sigma-Delta Modulator) with delayed feed-forward path in order to reduce the power consumption and area. The proposed SDM improve the architecture of conventional $3^{rd}$ order SDM which consists of two integrators. The proposed architecture can increase the coefficient values of first stage doubly by inserting the delayed feed-forward path. Accordingly, compared with the conventional architecture, the capacitor value($C_I$) of first integrator is reduced by half. Thus, because the load capacitance of first integrator became the half of original value, the output current of first op-amp is reduced as 51% and the capacitance area of first integrator is reduced as 48%. Therefore, the proposed method can optimize the power and the area. The proposed architecture in this paper is simulated under conditions which are supply voltage of 1.8V, input signal 1Vpp/1KHz, signal bandwidth of 24KHz and sampling frequency of 2.8224MHz in the 0.18um CMOS process. The simulation results are SNR(Signal to Noise Ratio) of 88.9dB and ENOB(Effective Number of Bits) of 14-bits. The total power consumption of the proposed SDM is $180{\mu}W$.

• Journal of IKEEE
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.1025-1030
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• 2018

The proposed modulator is designed by utilizing a conventional structure employing time division technique to realize the 4th order delta-sigma modulator using one op-amp. In order to reduce the influence of KT/C noise, the capacitance in the first and second integrators reused was chosen to be 20pF and capacitance of third and fourth integrators was designed to be 1pF. The stage variable technique in the low power reconfigurable op-amp was used to solve the stability issue due to different capacitance loads for the reduction of KT/C noise. This technique enabled the proposed modulator to reduce the power consumption of 15% with respect to the conventional one. The proposed modulator was fabricated with 0.18um CMOS N-well 1 poly 6 metal process and consumes 305uW at supply voltage of 1.8V. The measurement results demonstrated that SNDR, ENOB, DR, FoM(Walden), and FoM(Schreier) were 66.3 dB, 10.6 bits, 83 dB, 98 pJ/step, and 142.8 dB at the sampling frequency of 256kHz, oversampling ratio of 128, clock frequency of 1.024 MHz, and input frequency of 250 Hz, respectively.

• JSTS:Journal of Semiconductor Technology and Science
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• v.14 no.5
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• pp.579-587
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• 2014

This paper presents a variable gain amplifier (VGA) for an analog front-end (AFE) of ultrasound medical imaging. This VGA has a closed-loop topology and shows a 37-dB-linear characteristic with a single-stage amplifier. It consists of an op-amp, a non-binary-weighted capacitor array, and a gain-control block. This non-binary-weighted capacitor array reduces the required number of capacitors and the complexity of the gain-control block. The VGA has been fabricated in a 0.35-mm CMOS process. This work gives the largest gain range of 37 dB per stage, the largest P1 dB of 9.5 dBm at the 3.3-V among the recent VGA circuits available in the literature. The voltage gain is controlled in the range of [-10, 27] dB in a linear-in-dB scale with 16 steps by a 4-bit digital code. The VGA has a bandpass characteristic with a passband of [20 kHz, 8 MHz].

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 2008.07a
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• pp.1444-1445
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• 2008

최근 Wireless Local Area Network(WLAN), Wide-band Code Division Multiple Access(WCDMA), CDMA2000, Bluetooth 등 다양한 모바일 통신 시스템에 대한 수요가 증가하고 있다. 이와 같은 모바일 통신 시스템에는 70dB이상의 SFDR(Spurious Free Dynamic Range)을 가진 ADC(Analog-to-Digital Converter)가 사용된다. 본 논문에서는 모바일 통신 시스템을 위한 SFDR 70dBc의 성능을 제공하는 10비트, 100Msps 파이프라인 ADC를 제안한다. 제안한 ADC는 요구되는 해상도 및 속도 사양을 만족시키기 위해 3단 파이프라인 구조를 채택하였으며, 입력단 SHA(Sample and Hold)회로에는 Nyquist 입력에서도 10비트 이상의 정확도로 신호를 샘플링하기 위해 부트스트래핑 기법 기반의 샘플링 스위치를 적용하였다. residue amplifier 회로에는 전력을 줄이기 위해 8배 residue amplifier 대신 3개의 2배 ressidue amplifier를 사용하였다. ADC의 높은 사양을 만족시키기 위해서는 높은 이득을 가지는 op-amp가 필수적이다. 제안한 ADC 는 0.18um CMOS 공정으로 설계되었으며, 100Msps의 동작 속도에서 70dBc 수준의 SFDR과 60dB 수준의 SNDR(Signal to Noise and Distortion Ratio)을 보여준다.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.60 no.2
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• pp.446-450
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• 2011

Tunable SC(Switched Capacitor) bandpass ${\Sigma}-{\Delta}$(Sigma-Delta) modulator used in wireless system receiver occurs a signal attenuation according to tuning of center frequency in signal bandwidth. In this paper, tunable bandpass 4th order SC bandpass ${\Sigma}-{\Delta}$ modulator with novel structure is proposed for rejection of signal attenuation in signal bandwidth. The existing structure uses a ten variable coefficient values for rejection of signal reduction in the modulator. But the proposed structure only use a two variable coefficient values for rejection of signal attenuation in the modulator. Also, an adder and comparator is replaced with a comparator having 4 inputs in the modulator. Therefore, the existing structure has one more OP-AMP. The purposed modulator was designed in $0.18\;{\mu}m$ CMOS technology. The resolution of the modulator within 310 kHz bandwidth and 40 MHz sampling frequency under 6.67 MHz, 10 MHz and 13.33 MHz intermediate frequency are over 10 bit.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SD
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• v.47 no.8
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• pp.56-63
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• 2010

This work proposes a 12b 100MS/s 0.13um CMOS pipeline ADC for battery-powered mobile video applications such as DVB-Handheld (DVB-H), DVB-Terrestrial (DVB-T), Satellite DMB (SDMB), and Terrestrial DMB (TDMB) requiring high resolution, low power, and small size at high speed. The proposed ADC employs a three-step pipeline architecture to optimize power consumption and chip area at the target resolution and sampling rate. A single shared and switched op-amp for two MDACs removes a memory effect and a switching time delay, resulting in a fast signal settling. A two-step reference selection scheme for the last-stage 6b FLASH ADC reduces power consumption and chip area by 50%. The prototype ADC in a 0.13um 1P7M CMOS technology demonstrates a measured DNL and INL within 0.40LSB and 1.79LSB, respectively. The ADC shows a maximum SNDR of 60.0dB and a maximum SFDR of 72.4dB at 100MS/s, respectively. The ADC with an active die area of 0.92 $mm^2$ consumes 24mW at 1.0V and 100MS/s. The FOM, power/($f_s{\times}2^{ENOB}$), of 0.29pJ/conv. is the lowest of ever reported 12b 100MS/s ADCs.