Broadband mm-wave signal generation and amplification in CMOS using synthetic impedance

Abstract

This thesis explores the concept of synthesizing tunable impedances by establishing the appropriate phase relationship between the drain voltage and drain current of a MOS transistor. A high frequency, wide tuning range 105-121GHz oscillator and a small-footprint 20-40GHz oscillator using synthetic resonance are presented. The concept of impedance synthesis is also used to generate a novel frequency-adaptive loss compensation scheme for distributed amplifiers which is shown to improve the bandwidth by 30%. The performance of these circuits was analyzed and simulated on a TSMC 65nm bulk CMOS process.