M.Tech. VLSI Design & CAD:RF IC Design

First Semester I

Physics of Semiconductor Devices
IC Fabrication Technology
Digital VLSI Design
CAD Systems Environment
Research Methodology


Second Semester

Analog IC Design
Hardware Description Languages
Embedded Systems


Third Semester

Seminar
Thesis starts

Fourth Semester

Thesis


RF IC Design

Introduction to RF and Wireless Technology: Complexity comparison, Design bottleneck, Applications, Analog & Digital systems and choice of technology.

Basic concepts in RF Design: Non linearity and time variance ?V Effects of non linearity and cascaded nonlinear stages. Intersymbol interference, Random Processes and noise, Sensitivity and dynamic range, Passive Impedance Transformation.

Modulation and Detection: General considerations, Analog modulation ?V Amplitude modulation, phase and frequency modulation. Digital modulation ?V basic concepts, binary modulation and quadrature modulation. Power efficiency of modulation schemes ?V constant and variable envelope signals and spectral regrowth. Noncoherent detection.

Multiple Access Techniques and Wireless Standards: Multiple RF communications, Multiple Access Techniques ?V Time & frequency division duplexing, Frequency division multiple access, Time division multiple access and Code division multiple access. Wireless Standards - Advanced mobile phone services, North American Digital Standard, Global system for mobile communication, Qualcomm CDMA and Digital European Cordless Telephone.

Transceiver Architectures: General consideration. Receiver Architectures ?V Heterodyne receivers, Homodyne receivers, Image reject receivers, Digital IF receivers and Subsampling receivers. Transmitter Architectures ?V Direct conversion transmitters and two step transmitters. Transceiver performance tests.

Low Noise Amplifiers and Mixers: Low noise amplifiers ?V General considerations, Input matching, Bipolar LNAs and CMOS LNAs. Downconversion mixers ?V General considerations, Bipolar mixers, CMOS mixers and noise in mixers. Cascaded stages revisited.

Oscillators: General considerations, Basic LC Oscillator Topologies, Voltage-Controlled Oscillators. Phase Noise ?V effect of phase noise in RF communications, Q of an oscillator, Phase

noise mechanisms, noise power trade-off, effect of frequency division and multiplication on phase noise, oscillator pulling and pushing. Bipolar and CMOS LC Oscillators ?V Negative Gm oscillators and interpolative oscillators. Monolithic inductors, Resonatorless VCOs. Quadrature Signal Generations ?V RC-CR network, Havens technique, frequency division. Single sideband generation.

Frequency Synthesizers: General considerations. Phase lock loops ?V basic concepts, basic PLL, Charge pump PLLs, Types I & II PLLs, noise in PLLs, phase noise at input, phase noise of VCO and frequency multiplication. RF synthesizer architectures ?V Integer N architecture, fractional N architecture, Dual loop architecture and direct digital synthesis. Frequency dividers ?V divide by two circuits and dual modulus dividers.

Power Amplifiers: General considerations ?V linear and nonlinear PAs. Classification of power Amplifiers ?V Class A and B PAs, Class C PAs. High efficiency power amplifiers. Large signal impedance matching. Linearization techniques ?V feedforward, feedback, envelope elimination and restoration and LINC. Design examples.