Course Content
A traditional first course on Radio Frequency (RF) Integrated Circuit (IC) course (EE619: RF Microelectronics Chip Design) covers foundational RF concepts and the design of basic RF building blocks. This advanced course will build on these foundations and familiarize students with the design principles and practices of modern 5G wireless communication transceivers implemented in fully integrated form in nanoscale CMOS technology. A major part of the course will cover the fundamentals of multi-antenna transceiver design commonly employed at mm-wave frequencies (>30 GHz), where the design of phased-array systems and their constituent building blocks will be covered. Part I (Foundations 35% of the lectures): Si-based devices in SiGe/CMOS: transistor modeling, process characterization, gm/Id design methodology. Si-based passives in nanoscale CMOS: inductors, capacitors, transformers, transmission lines (TL), impact of BEOL and modeling. Review of RF impairments of noise/distortion, TL, and S-parameters. Two-port network theory, and application to microwave/mm-wave amplifier design (stability and noise of two-ports, amplifier noise/noise parameters/noise circles, power gain/ gain circles /stability circles etc.). Review of complex baseband (I/Q signal processing), and modern RF architectures to enable image rejection, advanced filtering etc. Part II (mm-wave IC design 65% of the lectures): This part of the course will build on the concepts developed in Part I and cover the fundamentals of multi-antenna transceiver design at mm-wave frequencies. Topics that will be covered include: Introduction to phased arrays and multi-antenna systems. System-level link-budget analysis. mmWave amplifier design: low-noise amplifiers. Phased-array transceiver building blocks: phase-shifters/vector-modulators, quadrature hybrids, coupled-resonators, variable-gain amplifiers, and couplers/power-dividers. mmWave VCOs. mmWave power-amplifier design. Case-studies of state-of-the-art mm-wave transceivers. Students will be assigned a multi-stage design project, featuring a study of system requirements and translation to circuit design specifications, followed by hand-analysis/behavioural-modelling, transistor-level circuit design, layout design and characterization electromagnetic structures, and finally post-layout characterization.
Text / References
- 1 1. RF Microelectronics, Behzad Razavi, 2nd Edition, 2 onwards, Pearson Education, Inc. 2. Electromagnetics for High-Speed Analog and Digital Communication Circuits, Ali Niknejad, 1st Edition, 2007, Cambridge University Press. 3. Microwave Engineering 302226 David M. Pozar, 4th Edition, 2 onwards, Wiley. 4. Design of Analog CMOS Integrated Circuits, Behzad Razavi, McGraw Hill Education, Second edition, 2017 onwards, McGraw Hill Education (India) Private Limited. 5. IEEE papers referenced in the class will be provided by the instructor.