6 documents found, page 1 of 1
Radiation-Hardened Bandgap Voltage and Current Reference for Space Applications...
Lourenço, N.; Passos, F.; Vieira, R.; Horta, N.; Guilherme, J.; Póvoa, R.This paper describes a radiation-hardened bandgap voltage reference (BGR) for space applications. The BGR has a second-order curvature compensation and can deliver a stable output voltage and current for N-type and P-type loads through internal resistors or, optionally, through an external precision resistor. The circuit includes three 8-bit trimming resistive ladders for post-fabrication calibration of the tem...
Architectural Design for Heartbeat Detection Circuits using Verilog-A Behaviora...
Vieira, R.; Passos, F.; Póvoa, R.; Martins, R.; Horta, N.; Guilherme, J.; Lourenço, N.This work presents a study of two analog frontend circuit architectures for heartbeat detection. Both circuits present an amplification block as the first stage, followed by a band-pass filter. In the first, the heartbeat detection is done using an adaptive threshold based on pulse-width, whereas the heartbeat detection in the second is done using a sample and hold to find the maximum and minimum peak of each b...
Sub- μW Tow-Thomas Based Biquad Filter with Improved Gain for Biomedical Applic...
Póvoa, R.; Arya, R.; Canelas, A.; Passos, F.; Martins, R.; Lourenço, N.; Horta, N.This paper presents an innovative topology of a gm-C Operational Transconductance Amplifier (OTA), with improved gain and energy-efficiency and its corresponding implementation inside a second order Tow-Thomas based filter configuration, for biomedical and healthcare applications. The proposed OTA architecture takes advantage of a current division technique, as well as the usage of a pair of cross-coupled volta...
New Mapping Strategies for Pre-Optimized Inductor Sets in Bottom-Up RF IC Sizin...
Lourenço, N.; Martins, R.; Póvoa, R.; Canelas, A.; Horta, N.; Passos, F.; Castro López, R.; Roca, E.; Fernández, F.This paper presents new indexing and mutation operators, in the context of bottom-up hierarchical multi-objective optimization of radio frequency integrated circuits, for pre-optimized sets of solutions from the hierarchical sub-levels when moving up in hierarchy. Two ideas, one based on a Voronoi decomposition and another based on the nearest neighborhood, are explored, where, and unlike previous approaches th...
Systematic Design of a Voltage Controlled Oscillator using a Layout-Aware Approach
Passos, F.; Castro Lópes, R.; Roca, E.; Fernándes, F.; Martins, R.; Lourenço, N.; Póvoa, R.; Canelas, A.; Horta, N.This paper focuses on the systematic design of voltage controlled oscillators (VCO), a commonly used radiofrequency (RF) electronic circuit. RF circuits are among the most difficult analog circuits to design due to its trade-offs and high operation frequencies. At such operation frequencies, layout parasitics and accurate passive component characterization become of upmost importance, causing re-design iteratio...
Layout-Aware Challenges and a Solution for the Automatic Synthesis of RadioFreq...
Martins, R.; Lourenço, N.; Póvoa, R.; Canelas, A.; Horta, N.; Passos, F.; Castro López, R.; Roca, E.; Fernández, F.In this paper, the major methodologies proposed in the last years to speed-up the synthesis of radio-frequency integrated circuits blocks are overviewed. The challenges to automate this task are discussed, and, to avoid non-systematic iterations between circuit and layout design steps, the architecture of an innovative solution is proposed. The proposed tool exploits the full capabilities of most established co...