Low noise,continuous-wave single-frequency 1.5-μm laser generated by a singly resonant optical parametric oscillator

We report a low noise continuous-wave （CW） single-frequency 1.5-μm laser source obtained by a singly resonant optical parametric oscillator （SRO） based on periodically poled lithium niobate （PPLN）. The SRO was pumped by a CW single-frequency Nd：YVO4 laser at 1.06μm. The 1.02 W of CW single-frequency signal laser at 1.5 μm was obtained at pump power of 6 W. At the output power of around 0.75 W, the power stability was better than ±l.5% and no mode-hopping was observed in 30 min and frequency stability was better than 8.5 MHz in 1 min. The signal wavelength could be tuned from 1.57 to 1.59 μm by varying the PPLN temperature. The 1.5-μm laser exhibits low noise characteristics, the intensity noise of the laser reaches the shot noise limit （SNL） at an analysis frequency of 4 MHz and the phase noise is less than 1 dB above the SNL at analysis frequencies above 10 MHz.

A 400 MHz Low Noise Amplifier at Cryogenic Temperature for Superconductor Filter System

A cryogenic low noise amplifier （LNA） using Agilent high electron mobility transistor （HEMT） for 380 MHzto 480 MHz is designed and fabricated, and the excellent cryogenic performance in superconducting receiver front-end for communication system is achieved. A special input impedance matching topology is implemented to provide low noise figure （NF） and good input matching in this cryogenic LNA design. The measurement results show that the NF is within 0.25 dB from the minimum NF of a single transistor, the power gain is above 20 dB, the flatness is within 1 dB, and the maximum input return loss is lower than -20 dB in bandwidth.

New low noise interface circuit for detecting weak current of micro-sensors

A new low noise interface circuit for detecting weak current of micro-sensors is designed.By using the transimpedance amplifier to substitute the charge amplifier,the closed-loop circuit can avoid the phase error of the charge amplifier.Therefore,the phase compensation devices will be cancelled,because there is no phase transformation through the transimpedance amplifier.As well as,by using CCCII devices to implement the high value feedback resistor of the impedance amplifier,the noise of the I-V transformation devices is reduced,comparing with the passive resistor.The floating resistor is easy to be integrated into chips,making the integration of the interface circuit of the intelligent sensors increase.Through the simulation,the phase error of the charge amplifier is almost 9°at 2 kHz and it changes with the working frequency of the micro-sensors making the phase compensation not easy.The value of the floating resistor is 250 kΩ where the bias current is 50 μA.The noise of the active resistor is 0.037 fV2/Hz,comparing with the noise of the passive resistor,which is 4.14 fV2/Hz.

Radio Frequency Low Noise Amplifier with Linearizing Bias Circuit

A 1.34 GHz-1=60 MHz low noise amplifier （LNA） designed in a 0.35 pm SiGe process is presented. The designed LNA exhibits a power gain of 21.46 dB and a noise figure （NF） of 1.27 dB at 1.34 GHz. The linearity is improved with an active biasing technique. The post-layout simulation shows an input referred 1-dB compression point （IPldn） of-11.52 dBm. Compared with the recent reported high gain LNAs, the proposed LNA has a much better linearity without degrading other performance. The LNA draws 10 mA current from a 3.3 V power supply.

A compact and reconfigurable low noise amplifier employing combinational active inductors and composite resistors feedback techniques

A compact and reconfigurable low noise amplifier(LNA)is proposed by combining an input transistor,composite transistors with Darlington configuration as the amplification and output transistor,T-type structure composite resistors instead of a simplex structure resistor,a shunt inductor feedback realized by a tunable active inductor(AI),a shunt inductor peaking technique realized by another tunable AI.The division and collaboration among different resistances in the T-type structure composite resistor realize simultaneously input impedance matching,output impedance matching and good noise performance;the shunt feedback and peaking technique using two tunable AIs not only extend frequency bandwidth and improve gain flatness,but also make the gain and frequency band can be tuned simultaneously by the external bias of tunable AIs;the Darlington configuration of composite transistors provides high gain;furthermore,the adoption of the small size AIs instead of large size passive spiral inductor,and the use of composite resistors make the LNA have a small size.The LNA is fabricated and verified by GaAs/InGaP hetero-junction bipolar transistor(HBT)process.The results show that at the frequency of 7 GHz,the gain S_(21)is maximum and up to 19 dB;the S_(21)can be tuned from 17 dB to 19 dB by tuning external bias of tunable AIs,that is,the tunable amount of S_(21)is 2 dB,and similarly at 8 GHz;the tunable range of 3 dB bandwidth is 1 GHz.In addition,the gain S_(21)flatness is better than 0.4 dB under frequency from 3.1 GHz to 10.6 GHz;the size of the LNA only has 760μm×1260μm(including PADs).Therefore,the proposed strategies in the paper provide a new solution to the design of small size and reconfigurable ultra-wideband(UWB)LNA and can be used further to adjust the variations of gain and bandwidth of radio frequency integrated circuits(RFICs)due to package,parasitic and the variation of fabrication process and temperature.

Optimum Design for a Low Noise Amplifier in S-Band

An optimum design of a low noise amplifier （LNA） in S-band working at 2-4 GHz is described. Choosing FHC40LG high electronic mobility transistor （HEMT）, the noise figure of the designed amplifier simulated by Microwave Office is no more than 1.5 dB, meanwhile the gain is no less than 20 dB in the given bandwidth. The simulated results agree with the performance of the transistor itself well in consideration of its own minimum noise figure （0.3 dB） and associated gain （15.5 dB）. Simultaneously, the stability factor of the designed amplifier is no less than 1 in the given bandwidth.

Design and performance of a high-speed and low-noise preamplifier for SiPM

Considering the R&D for upgrading the K^(0)_(L) andμdetectors in the Belle II experiment using a scintillator and silicon pho-tomultiplier(SiPM),we designed a compact high-speed and low-noise preamplifier.The preamplifier demonstrated a good gain stability,bandwidth of 426 MHz,baseline noise level ofσ≈0.6 mV,dynamic range of up to170 mV of the input signal amplitude,good time resolution of 20 ps,and it can be comprehensively applied to SiPMs.Adopting pole-zero-cancelation in the preamplifier reduces both the rise and fall times of the SiPM signal,which can significantly improve the time resolution and reduce the pile-up when using a large SiPM or an array of SiPMs.Various combinations of the preamplifier and several types of SiPMs demonstrated time resolutions better than 50 ps for most cases;when the number of detected photons was larger than 60,a time resolution of approximately 25 ps was achieved.

Low-noise,low-power-consumption seafloor vector magnetometer

The seafloor vector magnetometer is an effective tool for marine geomagnetic surveys and seafloor magnetotelluric(MT)detection.However,the noise,power consumption,cost,and volume characteristics of existing seafloor vector magnetometers are insufficient for practical use.Therefore,a low-noise,low-power-consumption seafloor vector magnetometer that can be used for data acquisition of deep-ocean geomagnetic vector components is developed and presented.A seafloor vector magnetometer mainly consists of a fluxgate sensor,data acquisition module,acoustic release module,glass sphere,frame,burn-wire release,and anchor.A new low-noise data acquisition module and a fluxgate sensor greatly reduce power consumption.Furthermore,compact size is achieved by integrating an acoustic telemetry module and replacing the acoustic release with an external burn-wire release.The new design and magnetometer characteristics reduce the volume of the instrument and the cost of hardware considerably,thereby improving the integrity and deployment efficiency of the equipment.Theoretically,it can operate for 90 days underwater at a maximum depth of 6000 m.The seafloor vector magnetometer was tested in the South China Sea and the Philippine Sea and obtained high-quality geomagnetic data.The deep-water environment facilitates magnetic field data measurements,and the magnetometer has an approximate noise level of 10 pT/rt(Hz)@1 Hz,a peak-to-peak value error of 0.2 nT,and approximate power consumption of 200 mW.The fluxgate sensor can measure the magnetic field in the lower frequency band and realize geomagnetic field measurements over prolonged periods.

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.

Adaptive Bistable Stochastic Resonance Based Weak Signal Reception in Additive Laplacian Noise

Weak signal reception is a very important and challenging problem for communication systems especially in the presence of non-Gaussian noise,and in which case the performance of optimal linear correlated receiver degrades dramatically.Aiming at this,a novel uncorrelated reception scheme based on adaptive bistable stochastic resonance(ABSR)for a weak signal in additive Laplacian noise is investigated.By analyzing the key issue that the quantitative cooperative resonance matching relationship between the characteristics of the noisy signal and the nonlinear bistable system,an analytical expression of the bistable system parameters is derived.On this basis,by means of bistable system parameters self-adaptive adjustment,the counterintuitive stochastic resonance(SR)phenomenon can be easily generated at which the random noise is changed into a benefit to assist signal transmission.Finally,it is demonstrated that approximately 8dB bit error ratio(BER)performance improvement for the ABSR-based uncorrelated receiver when compared with the traditional uncorrelated receiver at low signal to noise ratio(SNR)conditions varying from-30dB to-5dB.

Design of a low noise distributed amplifier with adjustable gain control in 0.15μm GaAs PHEMT

A low noise distributed amplifier consisting of 9 gain cells is presented.The chip is fabricated with 0.15-μm GaAs pseudomorphic high electron mobility transistor（PHEMT） technology from Win Semiconductor of Taiwan.A special optional gate bias technique is introduced to allow an adjustable gain control range of 10 dB.A novel cascode structure is adopted to extend the output voltage and bandwidth.The measurement results show that the amplifier gives an average gain of 15 dB with a gain flatness of±1 dB in the 2-20 GHz band.The noise figure is between 2 and 4.1 dB during the band from 2 to 20 GHz.The amplifier also provides 13.8 dBm of output power at a 1 dB gain compression point and 10.5 dBm of input third order intercept point（IIP3）,which demonstrates the excellent performance of linearity.The power consumption is 300 mW with a supply of 5 V,and the chip area is 2.36×1.01 mm^2.

A full W-band low noise amplifier module for millimeter-wave applications

A full W-band low noise amplifier （LNA） module is designed and fabricated. A broadband transition is introduced in this module. The proposed transition is designed, optimized based on the results from numerical simulations. The results show that 1 dB bandwidth of the transition ranges from 61 to 117 GHz. For the purpose of verification, two transitions in back-to-back connection are measured. The results show that transmission loss is only about 0.9-1.7 dB. This transition is used to interface integrated circuits to waveguide components. The characteristic of the LNA module is measured after assembly. It exhibits a broad bandwidth of 75 to 110 GHz, and has a small signal gain above 21 dB. The noise figure is lower than 5.2 dB throughout the entire W-band （below 3 dB from 89 to 95 GHz） at room temperature. The proposed LNA module exhibits potential for millimeter wave applications due to its high small signal gain, low noise, and low DC power consumption.

A 0.18μm CMOS low noise amplifier using a current reuse technique for 3.1-10.6 GHz UWB receivers

A new,low complexity,ultra-wideband 3.1-10.6 GHz low noise amplifier（LNA）,designed in a chartered 0.18μm RFCMOS technology,is presented.The ultra-wideband LNA consists of only two simple amplifiers with an inter-stage inductor connected.The first stage utilizing a resistive current reuse and dual inductive degeneration technique is used to attain a wideband input matching and low noise figure.A common source amplifier with an inductive peaking technique as the second stage achieves high flat gain and wide -3 dB bandwidth of the overall amplifier simultaneously.The implemented ultra-wideband LNA presents a maximum power gain of 15.6 dB,and a high reverse isolation of—45 dB,and good input/output return losses are better than -10 dB in the frequency range of 3.1-10.6 GHz.An excellent noise figure（NF） of 2.8-4.7 dB was obtained in the required band with a power dissipation of 14.1 mW under a supply voltage of 1.5 V.An input-referred third-order intercept point（IIP3） is -7.1 dBm at 6 GHz.The chip area,including testing pads,is only 0.8×0.9 mm2.

Design of low power common-gate low noise amplifier for 2.4 GHz wireless sensor network applications

This paper presents a differential low power low noise amplifier designed for the wireless sensor network （WSN） in a TSMC 0.18μm RF CMOS process.A two-stage cross-coupling cascaded common-gate（CG） topology has been designed as the amplifier.The first stage is a capacitive cross-coupling topology.It can reduce the power and noise simultaneously.The second stage is a positive feedback cross-coupling topology,used to set up a negative resistance to enhance the equivalent Q factor of the inductor at the load to improve the gain of the LNA.A differential inductor has been designed as the load to achieve reasonable gain.This inductor has been simulated by the means of momentum electromagnetic simulation in ADS.A ＂double-π＂ circuit model has been built as the inductor model by iteration in ADS.The inductor has been fabricated separately to verify the model. The LNA has been fabricated and measured.The LNA works well centered at 2.44 GHz.The measured gain S_（21） is variable with high gain at 16.8 dB and low gain at 1 dB.The NF（noise figure） at high gain mode is 3.6 dB,the input referenced 1 dB compression point（IP1dB） is about -8 dBm and the IIP3 is 2 dBm at low gain mode.The LNA consumes about 1.2 mA current from 1.8 V power supply.

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.

A 0.18μm CMOS dual-band low power low noise amplifier for a global navigation satellite system

This paper presents a dual-band low noise amplifier for the receiver of a global navigation satellite system. The differences between single band and multi-band design methods are discussed. The relevant parameter analysis and the details of circuit design are presented. The test chip was implemented in a TSMC 0.18 μm 1P4M RF CMOS process. The LNA achieves a gain of 16.8 dB/18.9 dB on 1.27 GHz/1.575 GHz. The measured noise figure is around 1.5-1.7 dB on both bands. The LNA consumes less than 4.3 mA of current from a 1.8 V power supply. The measurement results show consistency with the design. And the LNA can fully satisfy the demands of the GNSS receiver.

A low power low noise analog front end for portable healthcare system

The presented analog front end （AFE） used to process human bio-signals consists of chopping in- strument amplifier （IA）, chopping spikes filter and programmable gain and bandwidth amplifier. The capacitor- coupling input of AFE can reject the DC electrode offset. The power consumption of current-feedback based IA is reduced by adopting capacitor divider in the input and feedback network. Besides, IA＇s input thermal noise is decreased by utilizing complementary CMOS input pairs which can offer higher transconductance. Fabricated in Global Foundry 0.35 μm CMOS technology, the chip consumes 3.96 μA from 3.3 V supply. The measured input noise is 0.85μVrms （0.5-100 Hz） and the achieved noise efficient factor is 6.48.

A Δ ∑ fractional-N frequency synthesizer for FM tuner using low noise filter and quantization noise suppression technique

A △∑ fractional-N frequency synthesizer fabricated in a 130 nm CMOS technology is presented for the application of an FM tuner. A low noise filter, occupying a small die area and decreasing the output noise, is integrated on a chip. A quantization noise suppression technique, using a reduced step size of the frequency divider, is also adopted. The proposed synthesizer needs no off-chip components and occupies an area of 0.7 mm2. The in-band phase noise （from 10 to 100 kHz） below -108 dBc/Hz and out-of-band phase noise of -122.9 dBc/Hz （at 1 MHz offset） are measured with a loop bandwidth of 200 kHz. The quantization noise suppression technique reduces the in-band and out-of band phase noise by 15 dB and 7 dB respectively. The integrated RMS phase error is no more than 0.48°. The proposed synthesizer consumes a total power of 7.4 mW and the frequency resolution is less than 1 Hz.

A low noise multi-channel readout IC for X-ray cargo inspection

A low noise multi-channel readout integrated circuit （IC） which converts a detector current to analog voltage for X-ray cargo inspection is described. The readout IC provides 32 channels of a circuit having a maxi- mum dynamic range of 15 bit and is comprised of integrator gain selection, timing generator, shift register chain, integrator array, sample/hold （S/H） stage amplifier etc. and occupies a die area of 2.7 × 13.9 mm2. It operates at It was fabricated using 0.6 μm standard CMOS process, 1 MHz, consumes 100 mW from a 5 V supply and 4.096 V as reference, and has a measured output noise of 85 μVms on 63 pF of integrator gain capacitance and 440 pF of photodiode terminal capacitance so that steel plate penetration thickness can reach more than 400 mm.

The acoustical character of low noise asphalt pavements

The acoustical character of low noise asphalt pavement was studied theoretically and experimentally. Its normal incident absorption coefficient can reach 0.5 - 0.7, much better than that of general asphalt pavement, although both are the same in thickness and maximum aggregate size. The connected porosity is the most major parameter, which can control the coefficient. The more the porosity is, the higher the coefficient is. The peak value of normal incident absorption coefficient will increase and move towards lower frequency when the depth of pavement is thickened. The peak will approach a stable value when the depth is about 40 mm. The measurement results show that the traffic noise can reduce 4 dB - 8 dB at a test low noise asphalt pavement when a car speed is more than 60 km·h-1