Contribution to the characterization of substrate noise and its impact on radio frequency cmos circuits
- Autores: Miguel Ángel Méndez Villegas
- Directores de la Tesis: José Luis González Jiménez (dir. tes.)
- Lectura: En la Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) ( España ) en 2007
- Idioma: inglés
- Tribunal Calificador de la Tesis: Ángel Benito Rodríguez Vázquez (presid.), Xavier Aragonès Cervera (secret.), Roc Berenguer (voc.), Jean-François Clément (voc.), José Rius Vázquez (voc.)
- Materias:
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- Resumen
The evolution of the semiconductor technology has enabled during the last decade the realization of wireless communication systems with an increasing degree of integration. For some standards the single-chip integration of the whole communication system (SoC paradigm) has been a reality. Such SoCs integrate the digital section, which implements the baseband functionalities, together with the radio, which operates at high frequencies (RF). The realization and deployment of these Communications Systems-on-Chip (Com-SoC) requires low cost, low power, high performance, high integration density, and small size manufacturing technologies. In order to meet all these requirements the CMOS technology is usually selected. However, the single chip integration of mixed-signal circuits in CMOS technology faces severe problems due to signal integrity issues, which are aggravated as the technologic scales down. Among these problems, the substrate noise and its effects on the analog/RF sections has become a critical limiting factor for the implementation of Com-SoCs.
This thesis work boards two fundamental aspects of the substrate noise problematic: the characterization of the substrate noise generation, with emphasis in the frequency domain characteristics, and its impact on some RF CMOS circuits.
In our work the study of the substrate noise spectrum is addressed in order to determine its content in frequency bands where it can be potentially harmful for the correct operation of RF/analog circuits. The substrate noise spectrum characteristics are derived from the characteristics of the digital supply current (the dominant source of substrate noise) in combination with what is named the substrate coupling transfer function (a linear transformation that models the propagation of noise from the digital section to any substrate node of interest on the Com-SoC surface). The digital supply current spectrum is analyzed by considering it a stochastic process.
