The doctoral dissertations of the former Helsinki University of Technology (TKK) and Aalto University Schools of Technology (CHEM, ELEC, ENG, SCI) published in electronic format are available in the electronic publications archive of Aalto University - Aaltodoc.
Aalto

Bandpass Delta-Sigma Modulators for Radio Receivers

Teemu Salo

Dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Science in Technology to be presented with due permission of the Department of Electrical and Communications Engineering for public examination and debate in Auditorium S4 at Helsinki University of Technology (Espoo, Finland) on the 4th of April, 2003, at 12 o'clock noon.

Dissertation in PDF format (ISBN 951-22-6411-0)   [2894 KB]
Dissertation is also available in print (ISBN 951-22-6410-2)

Abstract

This thesis concerns discrete-time (DT) bandpass (BP) ΔΣ modulators targeted for intermediate frequency (IF) analog-to-digital (A/D) conversion in radio receivers. The receiver architecture adopted has to be capable of operating with different radio frequencies, channel bandwidths, and modulation techniques. This is necessary in order to achieve an extensive operating area and the possibility of utilizing a local mobile phone standard or a standard suitable for a specific service. The digital IF receiver is a good choice for a multi-mode and multi-band mobile phone receiver, because the signal demodulation and channel filtering are performed in the digital domain. This increases the flexibility of the receiver and relieves the design of the baseband part, but an A/D conversion with high dynamic range and low power dissipation is required. BP ΔΣ modulators are capable of converting a high-frequency narrow band signal and are therefore suitable for signal digitization in an IF receiver.

First, the theory of BP ΔΣ modulators is introduced. It has been determined that resonators are the most critical circuit blocks in the implementation of a high performance BP ΔΣ modulator. Different DT resonator topologies are studied and a double-delay (DD) resonator is found to be the best candidate for a high quality resonator. A new DD switched-capacitor (SC) resonator structure has been designed. Furthermore, two evolution versions of the designed SC resonator are presented and their nonidealities are analyzed. The three designed DD SC resonator structures are a main point of the thesis, together with the experimental results.

Five different DT BP ΔΣ modulator circuit structures have been implemented and measured. All three of the designed SC resonators are used in the implemented circuits. The experimental work consists of both single-bit and multi-bit structures, as well as both single-loop and cascade architectures. The circuits have been implemented with a 0.35 μm (Bi)CMOS technology and operate with a 3.0 V supply. The measured maximum signal-to-noise-and-distortion ratios (SNDRs) are 78 dB over 270 kHz (GSM), 75 dB over 1.25 MHz (IS-95), 69 dB over 1.762 MHz (DECT), and 48 dB over 3.84 MHz (WCDMA) bandwidths using a 60 MHz IF signal.

Keywords: analog integrated circuits, analog-digital conversion, bandpass delta-sigma modulation, CMOS, discrete-time systems, double-sampling, IF systems, radio receivers, sampled data circuits, subsampling, switched-capacitor circuits, resonators

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© 2003 Helsinki University of Technology


Last update 2011-05-26