Low noise multi-channel readout front-end in 0.35 μm CMOS process for APD-based PET detectors

Author(s):  
X. Fang ◽  
Ch. Hu-Guo ◽  
N. Ollivier-Henry ◽  
N.A. Mbow ◽  
D. Brasse ◽  
...  
Sensors ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 512
Author(s):  
Binghui Lin ◽  
Mohamed Atef ◽  
Guoxing Wang

A low-power, high-gain, and low-noise analog front-end (AFE) for wearable photoplethysmography (PPG) acquisition systems is designed and fabricated in a 0.35 μm CMOS process. A high transimpedance gain of 142 dBΩ and a low input-referred noise of only 64.2 pArms was achieved. A Sub-Hz filter was integrated using a pseudo resistor, resulting in a small silicon area. To mitigate the saturation problem caused by background light (BGL), a BGL cancellation loop and a new simple automatic gain control block are used to enhance the dynamic range and improve the linearity of the AFE. The measurement results show that a DC photocurrent component up-to-10 μA can be rejected and the PPG output swing can reach 1.42 Vpp at THD < 1%. The chip consumes a total power of 14.85 μW using a single 3.3-V power supply. In this work, the small area and efficiently integrated blocks were used to implement the PPG AFE and the silicon area is minimized to 0.8 mm × 0.8 mm.


Electronics ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (9) ◽  
pp. 1369
Author(s):  
Dongquan Huo ◽  
Luhong Mao ◽  
Liji Wu ◽  
Xiangmin Zhang

Direct conversion receiver (DCR) architecture is a promising candidate in the radio frequency (RF) front end because of its low power consumption, low cost and ease of integration. However, flicker noise and direct current (DC) offset are large issues. Owing to the local oscillator (LO) frequency, which is half of the RF frequency, and the absence of a DC bias current that introduces no flicker noise, the subharmonic passive mixer (SHPM) core topology front end overcomes the shortcoming effectively. When more and more receivers (RX) and transmitters (TX) are integrated into one chip, the linearity of the receiver front end becomes a very important performer that handles the TX and RX feedthrough. Another reason for the requirement of good linearity is the massive electromagnetic interference that exists in the atmosphere. This paper presents a linearity-improved RF front end with a feedforward body bias (FBB) subharmonic mixer core topology that satisfies modern RF front end demands. A novel complementary derivative superposition (DS) method is presented in low noise amplifier (LNA) design to cancel both the third- and second-order nonlinearities. To the best knowledge of the authors, this is the first time FBB technology is used in the SHPM core to improve linearity. A Volterra series is introduced to provide an analytical formula for the FBB of the SHPM core. The design was fabricated in a 0.13 μm complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) process with a chip area of 750 μm × 1270 μm. At a 2.4 GHz working frequency, the measurement result shows a conversion gain of 36 dB, double side band (DSB) noise figure (NF) of 6.8 dB, third-order intermodulation intercept point (IIP3) of 2 dBm, LO–RF isolation of 90 dB and 0.8 mW DC offset with 14.4 mW power consumption at 1.2 V supply voltage. These results exhibit better LO–RF feedthrough and DC offset, good gain and NF, moderate IIP3 and the highest figure of merit compared to the state-of-the-art publications.


2013 ◽  
Vol 284-287 ◽  
pp. 2647-2651
Author(s):  
Zhe Yang Huang ◽  
Che Cheng Huang ◽  
Jung Mao Lin ◽  
Chung Chih Hung

This paper presents a wideband wireless receiver front-end for 3.1-5.0GHz band group-1 (BG-1) WiMedia application. The front-end circuits are designed in 0.18um standard CMOS process. The experimental results show the maximum conversion power gain is 45.5dB; minimum noise figure is 2.9dB. Input return loss is lower than -9.3dB and output return loss is lower than -6.8dB. The maximum LO conversion power is 0dBm. 3dB working frequency is 1.9GHz (3.1GHz-5.0GHz) Total power consumption is 24.3mW including LNA, mixer and all buffers. Total chip area is 1.27mm2 including dummy and pads.


2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Avish Kosari ◽  
Jacob Breiholz ◽  
NingXi Liu ◽  
Benton Calhoun ◽  
David Wentzloff

This paper presents a power efficient analog front-end (AFE) for electrocardiogram (ECG) signal monitoring and arrhythmia diagnosis. The AFE uses low-noise and low-power circuit design methodologies and aggressive voltage scaling to satisfy both the low power consumption and low input-referred noise requirements of ECG signal acquisition systems. The AFE was realized with a three-stage fully differential AC-coupled amplifier, and it provides bio-signal acquisition with programmable gain and bandwidth. The AFE was implemented in a 130 nm CMOS process, and it has a measured tunable mid-band gain from 31 to 52 dB with tunable low-pass and high-pass corner frequencies. Under only 0.5 V supply voltage, it consumes 68 nW of power with an input-referred noise of 2.8 µVrms and a power efficiency factor (PEF) of 3.9, which makes it very suitable for energy-harvesting applications. The low-noise 68nW AFE was also integrated on a self-powered physiological monitoring System on Chip (SoC) that is used to capture ECG bio-signals. Heart rate extraction (R-R) detection algorithms were implemented and utilized to analyze the ECG data received by the AFE, showing the feasibility of <100 nW AFE for continuous ECG monitoring applications.


Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (24) ◽  
pp. 8476
Author(s):  
Yuxuan Tang ◽  
Yulang Feng ◽  
He Hu ◽  
Cheng Fang ◽  
Hao Deng ◽  
...  

This paper presents a wideband low-noise amplifier (LNA) front-end with noise and distortion cancellation for high-frequency ultrasound transducers. The LNA employs a resistive shunt-feedback structure with a feedforward noise-canceling technique to accomplish both wideband impedance matching and low noise performance. A complementary CMOS topology was also developed to cancel out the second-order harmonic distortion and enhance the amplifier linearity. A high-frequency ultrasound (HFUS) and photoacoustic (PA) imaging front-end, including the proposed LNA and a variable gain amplifier (VGA), was designed and fabricated in a 180 nm CMOS process. At 80 MHz, the front-end achieves an input-referred noise density of 1.36 nV/sqrt (Hz), an input return loss (S11) of better than −16 dB, a voltage gain of 37 dB, and a total harmonic distortion (THD) of −55 dBc while dissipating a power of 37 mW, leading to a noise efficiency factor (NEF) of 2.66.


2019 ◽  
Vol 33 (08) ◽  
pp. 1950085 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiangyu Li ◽  
Jianping Hu ◽  
Xiaowei Liu

A closed-loop high-precision front-end interface circuit in a standard 0.35 [Formula: see text]m CMOS technology for a tunneling magneto-resistance (TMR) sensor is presented in this paper. In consideration of processing a low frequency and weak geomagnetic signal, a low-noise front-end detection circuit is proposed with chopper technique to eliminate the 1/f noise and offset of operational amplifier. A novel ripple suppression loop is proposed for eliminating the ripple in a tunneling magneto-resistance sensor interface circuit. Even harmonics is eliminated by fully differential structure. The interface is fabricated in a standard 0.35 [Formula: see text]m CMOS process and the active circuit area is about [Formula: see text]. The interface chip consumes 7 mW at a 5 V supply and the 1/f noise corner frequency is lower than 1 Hz. The interface circuit of TMR sensors can achieve a better noise level of [Formula: see text]. The ripple can be suppressed to less than 10 [Formula: see text]V by ripple suppression loop.


Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (5) ◽  
pp. 1760
Author(s):  
Folla Kamdem Jérôme ◽  
Wembe Tafo Evariste ◽  
Essimbi Zobo Bernard ◽  
Maria Liz Crespo ◽  
Andres Cicuttin ◽  
...  

The front-end electronics (FEE) of the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) is needed very low power consumption and higher readout bandwidth to match the low power requirement of its Short Strip application-specific integrated circuits (ASIC) (SSA) and to handle a large number of pileup events in the High-Luminosity Large Hadron Collider (LHC). A low-noise, wide bandwidth, and ultra-low power FEE for the pixel-strip sensor of the CMS has been designed and simulated in a 0.35 µm Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) process. The design comprises a Charge Sensitive Amplifier (CSA) and a fast Capacitor-Resistor-Resistor-Capacitor (CR-RC) pulse shaper (PS). A compact structure of the CSA circuit has been analyzed and designed for high throughput purposes. Analytical calculations were performed to achieve at least 998 MHz gain bandwidth, and then overcome pileup issue in the High-Luminosity LHC. The spice simulations prove that the circuit can achieve 88 dB dc-gain while exhibiting up to 1 GHz gain-bandwidth product (GBP). The stability of the design was guaranteed with an 82-degree phase margin while 214 ns optimal shaping time was extracted for low-power purposes. The robustness of the design against radiations was performed and the amplitude resolution of the proposed front-end was controlled at 1.87% FWHM (full width half maximum). The circuit has been designed to handle up to 280 fC input charge pulses with 2 pF maximum sensor capacitance. In good agreement with the analytical calculations, simulations outcomes were validated by post-layout simulations results, which provided a baseline gain of 546.56 mV/MeV and 920.66 mV/MeV, respectively, for the CSA and the shaping module while the ENC (Equivalent Noise Charge) of the device was controlled at 37.6 e− at 0 pF with a noise slope of 16.32 e−/pF. Moreover, the proposed circuit dissipates very low power which is only 8.72 µW from a 3.3 V supply and the compact layout occupied just 0.0205 mm2 die area.


Sensors ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 1205 ◽  
Author(s):  
Iván Zamora ◽  
Eyglis Ledesma ◽  
Arantxa Uranga ◽  
Núria Barniol

This paper presents an analog front-end transceiver for an ultrasound imaging system based on a high-voltage (HV) transmitter, a low-noise front-end amplifier (RX), and a complementary-metal-oxide-semiconductor, aluminum nitride, piezoelectric micromachined ultrasonic transducer (CMOS-AlN-PMUT). The system was designed using the 0.13-μm Silterra CMOS process and the MEMS-on-CMOS platform, which allowed for the implementation of an AlN PMUT on top of the CMOS-integrated circuit. The HV transmitter drives a column of six 80-μm-square PMUTs excited with 32 V in order to generate enough acoustic pressure at a 2.1-mm axial distance. On the reception side, another six 80-μm-square PMUT columns convert the received echo into an electric charge that is amplified by the receiver front-end amplifier. A comparative analysis between a voltage front-end amplifier (VA) based on capacitive integration and a charge-sensitive front-end amplifier (CSA) is presented. Electrical and acoustic experiments successfully demonstrated the functionality of the designed low-power analog front-end circuitry, which outperformed a state-of-the art front-end application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) in terms of power consumption, noise performance, and area.


2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 315-322
Author(s):  
Manu Chilukuri ◽  
Sungyong Jung ◽  
Hoon-Ju Chung

In this paper, a low noise and low power analog front end for piezoelectric microphones used in hearing aid devices is presented. It consists of a Charge Amplifier, followed by a Variable Gain Amplifier and an Analog-to-Digital Converter. At the core of charge amplifier a two stage opamp with modified cascode current mirror is designed which achieves a gain of 93 dB and phase margin of 62°. Designed analog front end achieves an input referred noise of 0.12 μVrms and SNR of 74 dB. It consumes power of 430 μW from 1.8 V supply and occupies an area of 1.2 mm × 0.22 mm. Proposed circuit is designed and fabricated in 0.18 μm CMOS process. Designed circuit is interfaced with a sensor model of piezoelectric microphone, which mimics Ormia ochracea's auditory system, and its performance is successfully verified against simulation results.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document