Low noise frequency synthesizer with self-calibrated voltage controlled oscillator and accurate AFC algorithm

A low noise phase locked loop （PLL） frequency synthesizer implemented in 65 nm CMOS technology is introduced. A VCO noise reduction method suited for short channel design is proposed to minimize PLL output phase noise. A self-calibrated voltage controlled oscillator is proposed in cooperation with the automatic frequency calibration circuit, whose accurate binary search algorithm helps reduce the VCO tuning curve coverage, which reduces the VCO noise contribution at PLL output phase noise. A low noise, charge pump is also introduced to extend the tuning voltage range of the proposed VCO, which further reduces its phase noise contribution. The frequency synthesizer generates 9.75-11.5 GHz high frequency wide band local oscillator （LO） carriers. Tested 11.5 GHz LO bears a phase noise of-104 dBc/Hz at 1 MHz frequency offset. The total power dissipation of the proposed frequency synthesizer is 48 mW. The area of the proposed frequency synthesizer is 0.3 mm^2, including bias circuits and buffers.

Low frequency noise and radiation response in the partially depleted SOI MOSFETs with ion implanted buried oxide

Low frequency noise behaviors of partially depleted silicon-on-insulator(PDSOI) n-channel metal-oxide semiconductors(MOS) transistors with and without ion implantation into the buried oxide are investigated in this paper. Owing to ion implantation-induced electron traps in the buried oxide and back interface states, back gate threshold voltage increases from44.48 V to 51.47 V and sub-threshold swing increases from 2.47 V/dec to 3.37 V/dec, while electron field effect mobility decreases from 475.44 cm2/V·s to 363.65 cm2/V·s. In addition, the magnitude of normalized low frequency noise also greatly increases, which indicates that the intrinsic electronic performances are degenerated after ion implantation processing. According to carrier number fluctuation theory, the extracted flat-band voltage noise power spectral densities in the PDSOI devices with and without ion implantation are equal to 7×10-10V2·Hz-1and 2.7×10-8V2·Hz-1, respectively, while the extracted average trap density in the buried oxide increases from 1.42×1017cm-3·e V-1to 6.16×1018cm-3·e V-1. Based on carrier mobility fluctuation theory, the extracted average Hooge’s parameter in these devices increases from 3.92×10-5to 1.34×10-2after ion implantation processing. Finally, radiation responses in the PDSOI devices are investigated. Owing to radiation-induced positive buried oxide trapped charges, back gate threshold voltage decreases with the increase of the total dose. After radiation reaches up to a total dose of 1 M·rad(si), the shifts of back gate threshold voltage in the SOI devices with and without ion implantation are-10.82 V and-31.84 V, respectively. The low frequency noise behaviors in these devices before and after radiation are also compared and discussed.

Observation of nonconservation characteristics of radio frequency noise mechanism of 40-nm n-MOSFET

Bias non-conservation characteristics of radio-frequency noise mechanism of 40-nm n-MOSFET are observed by modeling and measuring its drain current noise. A compact model for the drain current noise of 40-nm MOSFET is proposed through the noise analysis. This model fully describes three kinds of main physical sources that determine the noise mechanism of 40-nm MOSFET, i.e., intrinsic drain current noise, thermal noise induced by the gate parasitic resistance, and coupling thermal noise induced by substrate parasitic effect. The accuracy of the proposed model is verified by noise measurements, and the intrinsic drain current noise is proved to be the suppressed shot noise, and with the decrease of the gate voltage, the suppressed degree gradually decreases until it vanishes. The most important findings of the bias non-conservative nature of noise mechanism of 40-nm n-MOSFET are as follows.（i） In the strong inversion region, the suppressed shot noise is weakly affected by the thermal noise of gate parasitic resistance. Therefore, one can empirically model the channel excess noise as being like the suppressed shot noise.（ii） In the middle inversion region, it is almost full of shot noise.（iii） In the weak inversion region, the thermal noise is strongly frequency-dependent, which is almost controlled by the capacitive coupling of substrate parasitic resistance. Measurement results over a wide temperature range demonstrate that the thermal noise of 40-nm n-MOSFET exists in a region from the weak to strong inversion, contrary to the predictions of suppressed shot noise model only suitable for the strong inversion and middle inversion region. These new findings of the noise mechanism of 40-nm n-MOSFET are very beneficial for its applications in ultra low-voltage and low-power RF, such as novel device electronic structure optimization, integrated circuit design and process technology evaluation.

TRPV4-induced Neurofilament Injury Contributes to Memory Impairment after High Intensity and Low Frequency Noise Exposures

Objective Exposure to high intensity, low frequency noise(HI-LFN) causes vibroacoustic disease(VAD),with memory deficit as a primary non-auditory symptomatic effect of VAD. However, the underlying mechanism of the memory deficit is unknown. This study aimed to characterize potential mechanisms involving morphological changes of neurons and nerve fibers in the hippocampus, after exposure to HILFN.Methods Adult wild-type and transient receptor potential vanilloid subtype 4 knockout(TRPV4^(-/-)) mice were used for construction of the HI-LFN injury model. The new object recognition task and the Morris water maze test were used to measure the memory of these animals. Hemoxylin and eosin and immunofluorescence staining were used to examine morphological changes of the hippocampus after exposure to HI-LFN.Results The expression of TRPV4 was significantly upregulated in the hippocampus after HI-LFN exposure. Furthermore, memory deficits correlated with lower densities of neurons and neurofilamentpositive nerve fibers in the cornu ammonis 1(CA1) and dentate gyrus(DG) hippocampal areas in wildtype mice. However, TRPV4^(-/-)mice showed better performance in memory tests and more integrated neurofilament-positive nerve fibers in the CA1 and DG areas after HI-LFN exposure.Conclusion TRPV4 up-regulation induced neurofilament positive nerve fiber injury in the hippocampus,which was a possible mechanism for memory impairment and cognitive decline resulting from HI-LFN exposure. Together, these results identified a promising therapeutic target for treating cognitive dysfunction in VAD patients.

Degradation of current–voltage and low frequency noise characteristics under negative bias illumination stress in InZnO thin film transistors

The instabilities of indium–zinc oxide thin film transistors under bias and/or illumination stress are studied in this paper. Firstly, illumination experiments are performed, which indicates the variations of current–voltage characteristics and electrical parameters（such as threshold voltage and sub-threshold swing） are dominated by the stress-induced ionized oxygen vacancies and acceptor-like states. The dependence of degradation on light wavelength is also investigated. More negative shift of threshold voltage and greater sub-threshold swing are observed with the decrease of light wavelength.Subsequently, a negative bias illumination stress experiment is carried out. The degradation of the device is aggravated due to the decrease of recombination effects between ionized oxygen vacancies and free carriers. Moreover, the contributions of ionized oxygen vacancies and acceptor-like states are separated by using the mid-gap method. In addition, ionized oxygen vacancies are partially recombined at room temperature and fully recombined at high temperature. Finally, low-frequency noise is measured before and after negative bias illumination stress. Experimental results show few variations of the oxide trapped charges are generated during stress, which is consistent with the proposed mechanism.

Temperature-Dependent Drain Current Characteristics and Low Frequency Noises in Indium Zinc Oxide Thin Fihn Transistors

The I-V characteristics and low frequency noises for indium zinc oxide thin film transistor are measured between 250 K and 430 K. The experimental results show that drain currents are thermally activated following the Meyer Neldel rule, which can be explained by the multiple-trapping process. Moreover, the field effect electron mobility firstly increases, and then decreases with the increase of temperature, while the threshold voltage decreases with increasing the temperature. The activation energy and the density of localized gap states are extracted. A noticeable increase in the density of localized states is observed at the higher temperatures.

Stochastic resonance of a damped oscillator with frequency fluctuation driven by a periodic external force

Considering a damped linear oscillator model subjected to a white noise with an inherent angular frequency and a periodic external driving force, we derive the analytic expression of the first moment of output response, and study the stochastic resonance phenomenon in a system. The results show that the output response of this system behaves as a simple harmonic vibration, of which the frequency is the same as the external driving frequency, and the variations of amplitude with the driving frequency and the inherent frequency present a bona fide stochastic resonance.

Investigation on the intensity noise characteristics of the semiconductor ring laser

Based on the frequency-domain multimode theoretical model, detailed investigations on the noise characteristic of the semiconductor ring laser （SRL） are first performed in this paper. The comprehensive nonlinear terms related to the third order nonlinear susceptibility Z3 are included in this model; the Langevin noise sources for electric field and carrier density fluctuations are also taken into account. As the injection current increases, the SRL may present several operation regimes. Remarkable and unusual low frequency noise enhancement in the form of a broad low frequency tail extending all the way to the relaxation oscillation peak is observed in any of the operation regimes of SRLs. The influences of the backscattering coefficient on the relative intensity noise （RIN） spectrum in typical operation regimes are investigated in detail.

A low-noise widely tunable Gm-C filter with frequency calibration

A fourth-order Gm-C Chebyshev low-pass filter is presented as channel selection filter for reconfigurable multi-mode wireless receivers. Low-noise technologies are proposed in optimizing the noise characteristics of both the Gm cells and the filter topology. A frequency tuning strategy is used by tuning both the transconductance of the Gm cells and the capacitance of the capacitor banks. To achieve accurate cut-off frequencies, an on-chip calibration circuit is presented to compensate for the frequency inaccuracy introduced by process variation. The filter is fabricated in a 0.13 m CMOS process. It exhibits a wide programmable bandwidth from 322.5 k Hz to20 MHz. Measured results show that the filter has low input referred noise of 5.9 n V/（Hz）^（1/2） and high out-of-band IIP3 of 16.2 d Bm. It consumes 4.2 and 9.5 m W from a 1 V power supply at its lowest and highest cut-off frequencies respectively.

Carrier frequency offset and impulse noise estimation for underwater acoustic orthogonal frequency division multiplexing

The carrier frequency offset（CFO）and impulse noise always affect the performance of underwater acoustic communication_systems.The CFO and impulse noise could be estimated by using the null subcarriers to cancel the effects of the two types of interference.The null subcarriers estimation methods include optimal separate estimation and joint estimation.The separate estimation firstly estimates the CFO value and then estimates the impulse noise value.However,the CFO and impulse noise always affect each other when either of them is estimated separately.The performance could be improved by using the joint estimation.The results of simulations and experiments have showed that these two optimization methods have good performance and the joint estimation has better performance than the separate estimation method.There is 3 dB performance gain at the BER value of 10^（-2）when using the joint estimation method.Thus these methods could improve the system robustness by using the CFO compensation and impulse noise suppression.

Design of a weak bioelectric signal acquisition circuit

A surface electromyography(sEMG)signal acquisition circuit based on high-order filtering is designed.We use a two-stage adjustable amplifier and a high-order Sallen-Key bandpass filter to solve the problems of non-adjustable amplification gain and low filtering order in traditional acquisition circuits.The experimental results show that the designed sEMG signal acquisition device can eliminate power frequency interference effectively,the stopband drop of the filtering part reaches approximately-100 dB/dec,which can effectively extract useful signals between 20-500 Hz,and the amplification gain reaches 60 dB.

Passive phase noise compensation for fiber-optic radio frequency transfer with a nonsynchronized source

We propose a passive compensation fiber-optic radio frequency（RF） transfer scheme with a nonsynchronized RF stable source during a round-trip time, which can avoid high-precision phase-locking and efficiently suppress the effect of backscattering only using two wavelengths at the same time. A stable frequency signal is directly reproduced by frequency mixing at the remote site. The proposed scheme is validated by the experiment over a 40 km single mode fiber spool using nonsynchronized common commercial RF sources. The influence of the stability of nonsynchronized RF sources on the frequency transfer is investigated over different length fiber links.

Frequency correlation and group time delay of ambient noise and ship radiated-noise in the sea

The characteristics of frequency correlation and group time delay of ambient noise and ship radiated-noise in the sea are studied. The theoretical and experimental results show that the frequency correlation of ship radiated-noise is much greater than that of ambient noise,and the frequency correlation of ship radiated-noise at long distance has obvious group time delay

Ocean dynamic noise energy flux directivity in the 400 Hz to 700 Hz frequency band

Results of field studies of underwater dynamic noise energy flux directivity at two wind speeds, 6 m/s and 12 m/s, in the 400 Hz to 700 Hz frequency band in the deep open ocean are presented. The measurements were made by a freely drifting telemetric combined system at 500 m depth. Statistical characteristics of the horizontal and vertical dynamic noise energy flux directivity are considered as functions of wind speed and direction. Correlation between the horizontal dynamic noise energy flux direction and that of the wind was determined; a mechanism of the horizontal dynamic noise energy flux generation is related to the initial noise field scattering on ocean surface waves.

Simultaneous detection of CH_(4)and CO_(2)through dual modulation off-axis integrated cavity output spectroscopy

This study established a novel method for the simultaneous detection of two-component gases.Radio frequency(RF)white noise disturbance laser current and wavelength modulation were simultaneously used to improve the off-axis integrated cavity output spectroscopy technique,and a high-precision dual modulation OA-ICOS(RF-WM-OA-ICOS)system was established.The two laser beams were coupled into one laser beam that was applied incident to the cavity of RF-WM-OA-ICOS system.The second harmonic signals of CH_(4)and CO_(2)gas simultaneously appeared in the rising or falling edge of a triangular wave.This method was used to measure CH_(4)and CO_(2)with different concentrations.The results indicated that the proposed system has high stability and can accurately and simultaneously measure the concentrations of CH_(4)and CO_(2),with an optimal integration time of 220 s.The minimum detection limit was 10 ppb for CH_(4)and 1.5 ppm for CO_(2).The corresponding noise equivalent absorption sensitivity values were calculated as 2.67×10^(-13)cm^(-1)·Hz^(-1/2)and 5.18×10^(-11)cm^(-1)·Hz^(-1/2),respectively.The proposed dual-component gas simultaneous detection method can also be used for high-precision simultaneous detection of other gases.Therefore,this study may serve as a reference for developing portable multicomponent gas analyzers.

An imaging condition for reverse time migration based on wavefield decomposition

Reverse Time Migration(RTM) is a high precision imaging method of seismic wavefield at present,but low-frequency noises severely affect its imaging results.Thus one of most important aspect of RTM is to select the proper noise suppression method.The wavefield characteristics of the Poynting vector are analyzed and the upgoing,downgoing,leftgoing and rightgoing waves are decomposed using the Poynting vector of the acoustic wave equation.The normalized wavefield decomposition cross-correlation imaging condition is used to suppress low-frequency noises in RTM and improve the imaging precision.Numerical experiments using the Mamousi velocity model are performed and the results demonstrate that the upgoing,downgoing,leftgoing and rightgoing waves are well decomposed using the Poynting vector.Compared with the normalized cross-correlation imaging and Laplacian filtering method,the results indicate that the low-frequency noises are well suppressed by using the normalized wavefield decomposition cross-correlation imaging condition.

Fiber-delay-line-referenced optical frequency combs:three stabilization schemes

We demonstrate the stabilization of an optical frequency comb(OFC) using a segment of fiber delay line as a reference. A mode-locked Er-doped fiber laser is phase locked to a kilometer-long fiber delay line using three different schemes. The short-term stability of the comb modes in the OFC stabilized by these schemes is obviously enhanced, down to the 10;level at millisecond average time. Among these three schemes, phase locking two bunches of comb modes in the OFC to the same fiber delay line exhibits the lowest residual phase noise. Fiber-delay-line-referenced OFCs can provide reliable laser sources in precise metrology owing to the advances of low cost, compactness, and high integration.

Silicon-film-related random telegraph noise in UTBOX silicon-on-insulator nMOSFETs

This paper studies the amplitude of random telegraph noise （RTN） caused by a single trap in the sili- con film of ultra-thin buried oxide （UTBOX） silicon-on-insulator （SOl） devices. The film-defect-related RTN was identified and analyzed by low frequency noise measurement and time domain measurement. Emphasis is on the relative amplitude AID/ID, which is studied in the function of the front-gate, the back-gate and the drain-to-source biases. Interesting asymmetric or symmetric VDS dependence of switched source and drain are observed and sup- ported by calibrated Sentaurus simulations. It is believed the asymmetry of the VDs dependence of the switched source and drain is related to the lateral trap position along the source and drain.

A 0.8–4.2 GHz monolithic all-digital PLL based frequency synthesizer for wireless communications

A 0.8–4.2 GHz monolithic all-digital PLL based frequency synthesizer for wireless communications is successfully realized by the 130 nm CMOS process. A series of novel methods are proposed in this paper.Two band DCOs with high frequency resolution are utilized to cover the frequency band of interest, which is as wide as 2.5 to 5 GHz. An overflow counter is proposed to prevent the ＂pulse-swallowing＂ phenomenon so as to significantly reduce the locking time. A NTW-clamp digital module is also proposed to prevent the overflow of the loop control word. A modified programmable divider is presented to prevent the failure operation at the boundary.The measurement results show that the output frequency range of this frequency synthesizer is 0.8–4.2 GHz. The locking time achieves a reduction of 84% at 2.68 GHz. The best in-band and out-band phase noise performances have reached –100 d Bc/Hz, and –125 d Bc/Hz respectively. The lowest reference spur is –58 d Bc.

Ammonia sensing using arrays of silicon nanowires and graphene

Ammonia （NH3） is a toxic gas released in different industrial, agricultural and natural processes. It is also a biomarker for some diseases. These require NH3 sensors for health and safety reasons. To boost the sensitiv- ity of solid-state sensors, the effective sensing area should be increased. Two methods are explored and compared using an evaporating pool of 0.5 mL NH4OH （28% NH3）. In the first method an array of Si nanowires （Si NWA） is obtained via metal-assisted-electrochemical etching to increase the effective surface area. In the second method CVD graphene is suspended on top of the Si nanowires to act as a sensing layer. Both the effective surface area as well as the density of surface traps influences the amplitude of the response. The effective surface area of Si NWAs is 100 × larger than that of suspended graphene for the same top surface area, leading to a larger response in amp- litude by a factor of -7 notwithstanding a higher trap density in suspended graphene. The use of Si NWAs in- creases the response rate for both Si NWAs as well as the suspended graphene due to more effective NH3 diffu- sion processes.