An intelligently controlled RF power amplifier with a reconfigurable MEMS-varactor tuner

Qiao, D.; Molfino, Robert P.; Lardizabal, S.M.; Pillans, B.; Asbeck, P.M.; Jerinic, G.

doi:10.1109/tmtt.2005.843495

Cited by 102 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 10 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The impedance of a load must be the complex conjugate of the impedance of its source to receive all its power. A broadband maximum power transfer could be achieved by a dynamic impedance matching system [5].…”

Section: The Automatic Impedance Matching Systemmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For example, when the carrier frequency of a Software Defined Radio (SDR) is changing [1] or when the external environment influences the impedance of the antenna [2]- [4], signal deteriorations and power loss occur. To overcome these problems, Automatic Impedance Matching Systems (AIMS) were introduced [1]- [3], [5]. AIMS are circuits that aim at maximizing the power transfer between a load and a source of an RF circuit by automatically tuning the impedance matching.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The dynamic range and sensitivity of the power detector are leading factors in the performance of the system. CMOS compatible directional couplers [6], [7], power detectors [1], [4], [8], [9] and impedance matching networks [2], [3], [5], [10] have already been reported. This paper focuses on the design of a power detector for an AIMS that is currently being developed by our team.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

A CMOS RF power detector for an Automatic Impedance Matching System

Richardson

Kouki

Gagnon

2011

2011 IEEE 9th International New Circuits and Systems Conference

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper presents the design of a CMOS RF RMS power detector for an Automatic Impedance Matching System. The power detector requirements for this application, in terms of dynamic range, resolution, settling time and power consumption, are met by distributing the dynamic range over three power detection units. The appropriate unit is dynamically selected based on the input power range. The output of the detector is digital and linear-in-decibel. The selectors and detection units have been designed in 0.13-μm CMOS technology. Circuit-level simulation results show a dynamic range of 27 dB for input frequencies extending from 800 MHz to 8.5 GHz. The sensitivity of the power detector is −27 dBm, the settling time is less than 12 μs and the power consumption is 1.2 mW.

show abstract

Section: The Automatic Impedance Matching Systemmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

A CMOS RF power detector for an Automatic Impedance Matching System

Richardson

Kouki

Gagnon

2011

2011 IEEE 9th International New Circuits and Systems Conference

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…To the authors' knowledge, the impact of using tunable matching networks on amplifier efficiency and linearity has not been investigated previously. Although there are many tunable matching network designs, [2,15,25,28,32,33,35,38,39] examples of complete tunable amplifier modules are not many [6,8,11,18,37]. Most of the tunable amplifiers presented in the literature are designed for frequencies between 10-40 GHz and provide up to 10% tunability.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This frequency band of operation and range of tunability is insufficient for the realization of the commercial SDR concept. Furthermore, no information was supplied in [6,8,11,18,37] regarding the efficiency and linearity of these tunable amplifiers. However, it is widely accepted that the linearity and efficiency of RF front-end components are bottlenecks in reconfigurable radio design [16,36].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Design and Analysis of Frequency-Tunable Amplifiers using Varactor Diode Topologies

Nesimoğlu

2011

Circuits Syst Signal Process

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The design of frequency-tunable amplifiers is investigated and the tradeoff between linearity, efficiency and tunability is revealed. Several tunable amplifiers using various varactor diode topologies as tunable devices are designed by using loadpull techniques and their performances are compared. The amplifier using anti-series distortion-free varactor stack topology achieves 38% power added efficiency and it may be tuned from 1.74 to 2.36 GHz (about 35% tunable range). The amplifier using anti-series/anti-parallel topology is tunable from 1.74 to 2.14 GHz (about 23% tunable range) and provides 42% power added efficiency. It is demonstrated that tunable amplifiers using distortion-free varactor stack topologies provide better power added efficiency than the tunable amplifiers using reverse biased varactor diodes and their linearity is similar to that of a conventional amplifier. These amplifiers may facilitate the realization of frequency agile radio frequency transceiver front-ends and may replace several parallel connected amplifiers used in conventional multimode radios.

show abstract