Advanced architectures for next generation wireless integrated circuits

In this thesis, we present and discuss two advanced architectures of wireless integrated circuits.;In the first part of this thesis we will focus on the design of a inductorless receiver, which include a LNA, mixer and frequency synthesizer. Inductors are used in RF design to extend the bandwidth by resonating out the load and/or parasitic capacitance. However, on-chip inductors are large and cannot be ported easily from one process to the next. Due to modern CMOS scaling, inductorless RF design is rapidly becoming possible. In this thesis we describe a new methodology for designing the RF frontends necessary for the wideband 1GHz-10GHz bandwidth in a 0.13mum CMOS technology. To validate our design methodology two receiver RF frontends were designed; a traditional inductor based design and an inductorless design. A common-gate LNA transconductor is followed by a capacitive peaking LNA-mixer pair (CPLM). Measurement results indicate that CPLM with the same bandwidth has better linearity, comparable noise figure and uses only 17% more power. The silicon area for the CPLM is only 22% of the IPLM. Both designs can be mated with an inductorless, ring-oscillator based, wide lock range and low power PLL also shown in this thesis.;We present theory and prototype results for injection-locked frequency dividers based on differential ring oscillators (D-ILFD) and single-ended ring oscillators (S-ILFD), which can be locked to all harmonics (i.e., even and odd). We have developed a general theory for lock range and phase noise for all harmonics for both topologies. Measurement results for the D-ILFD and the S-ILFD show that the lock range decreases with increasing harmonics at the low harmonics while leveling off for larger division ratios. Measured integrated phase noise for D-ILFD and S-ILFD also show that the integrated phase noise decreases with increasing harmonics. The measurement results corroborate our theory. Ring oscillator based D-ILFDs and S-ILFDs are compact and consume low power making them well suited for wideband low power PLLs.;We exploit the ring VCO based on an updated Maneatis delay cell with self-boosted biased techniques, which has a ultra wide tuning range of 1 GHz to 10.3GHz. The injection-locked frequency divider (ILFD), which can lock to all harmonics, has been used. A wide lock range, low power PLL based ring VCO and ILFD has been designed for UWB radio. Experimental results indicate that integrated phase noise is below a 30 and power consumption is only 8.1 mA to 21.85 mA for the entire frequency bands.;In the second part of this thesis, we focus on noise isolation for mixed-signal (RF/analog/digital) design in CMOS 3D ICs. Faraday cages have traditionally been used to provide isolation from electromagnetic fields. In this thesis, we describe the use of Faraday cages for reducing crosstalk in 3D ICs. We validate our methodology with a combination of simulation and measurements from fabricated prototype designs. Measurement and simulation results show that the crosstalk between the transmitter and receiver reduces by about 75dB up to 10GHz by using a Faraday cage in combination with tier-to-tier isolation, which is one of best performance reported so far. Measurement results indicate that the Faraday cages have no effect on the S-parameters and linearity of inductorless RF circuits. We further develop a lumped equivalent model for crosstalk with and without a Faraday cage. There is good agreement between measurement, 3D electromagnetic simulation and lumped circuit simulation.