Future Work

5.1 Conclusion

In this thesis, two nonlinear circuits, up-conversion mixer and frequency tripler were designed and analyzed. These two nonlinear circuits were fabricated using 0.13-μm and 0.18-μm standard CMOS technology, respectively.

The up-conversion mixer was verified to have 3.5-GHz IF bandwidth which is suitable for high-speed data transmission in 60-GHz applications. Large-signal analysis was employed during circuit design for manipulating nonlinear effects.

A novel frequency tripler (HCI-FT) is proposed to efficiently generate the third-order harmonic. According to the simulation results, the HCI-FT provides moderated conversion gain compared to other published works at very low power consumption. Furthermore, due to the interaction of I/Q signals inside the HCI-FT, the fundamental I/Q imbalance is not deteriorated after tripling. This makes the HCI-FT has great potential in system integration. Detailed analyses and investigations were done to optimize the performance of HCI-FT.

5.2 Future Work

The Marchand-type balun employed in the output of up-conversion mixer introduces extra insertion loss since it breaks the basis mechanism of Marchand balun for shunt peaking consideration. There should be some other methods to look after both sides in a better compromise. In addition, some detailed considerations can be done on the frequency response of transistors, to further extend the IF bandwidth.

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As for the HCI-FT, the mechanism of generating the third-order harmonic is intrinsically a broadband technique. An output tank with broader frequency response could further accentuate the advantage of the HCI-FT. Moreover, some feedback or feedforward path could be added to suppress the fundamental signal.

The up-conversion mixer with wide IF bandwidth is suitable for high-speed data transmission; and the HCI-FT provides tripled LO signal with the lockup of I/Q imbalance. In addition, both these two circuits have low power consumption. The integration of these two circuits has great potential in communication systems.

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Vita

姓名：陳 煥 昇

出生日期：中華民國七十二年十一月二十日 學經歷：

國立台南第一高級中學 (88 年 9 月～91 年 7 月) 國立交通大學電機與控制工程學系 (91 年 9 月～95 年 7 月) 國立交通大學電信工程研究所 (95 年 9 月～97 年 7 月)