skip to main content


Title: A 345μW 1GHz Process and Temperature Invariant Constant Slope-and-Swing Ramp-based 7-bit Phase Interpolator for True-Time-Delay Spatial Signal Processors
In the baseband time delay (TD) elements used for delay compensation in discrete-time beamformers, phase interpolator (PI) plays a crucial role as the resolution of the PI defines the delay resolution of the TD. In this paper, we present a process and temperature invariant high-resolution and highly linear low-power PI. The proposed PI uses current integration which generates an adaptable constant slope-and-swing ramp signal to achieve low power. By switched-capacitor bias generation, the PI linearity is enhanced with 0.2 LSB DNL and 0.3 LSB INL, respectively. The 7-bit PI is realized in 65nm CMOS technology can generate the full range delay with a resolution of 8psec with the input of 1GHz. The PI consumes a power of 345μW and occupies an active area of 0.021mm2. Keywords—Ramp-rate tracking, constant slope-and-swing, phase interpolator, ramp-based, baseband time delay  more » « less
Award ID(s):
2030159
NSF-PAR ID:
10351767
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ; ; ; ; ;
Date Published:
Journal Name:
IEEE Radio Frequency Integrated Circuits Symposium
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
More Like this
  1. Active control of interference is necessary with increased cell density, more complicated environmental reflections, and coexistence of multiple networks for next-generation wireless communications. The existing radio receiver architectures for spatial interference cancellation (SpICa) are limited by the spatial nulls created by a phased-antenna array (PAA) and cannot cover wide modulated bandwidths (BWs). We propose a discrete-time-delay-compensating technique for canceling spatial interferences with wide modulated BWs to reduce the dynamic range requirement for the data converter. Integral to the proposed circuit is a switched-capacitor-based multiply-and-accumulate processor that incorporates a reconfigurable phase interpolator and time interleaver for precise digitally tunable delays and multiplication of the input signal to an orthogonal matrix. The digital time interleaver enables 5-ps resolution with a reconfigurable range up to 15 ns. The measured results demonstrate greater than 35-dB SpICa over 80-MHz modulated BWs in the 65-nm CMOS with 52 mW of power consumption. 
    more » « less
  2. Effect of airfoil thickness on onset of dynamic stall is investigated using large eddy simulations at chord-based Reynolds number of 200 000. Four symmetric NACA airfoils of thickness-to-chord ratios of 9 %, 12 %, 15 % and 18 % are studied. The three-dimensional Navier–Stokes solver, FDL3DI is used with a sixth-order compact finite difference scheme for spatial discretization, second-order implicit time integration and discriminating filters to remove unresolved wavenumbers. A constant-rate pitch-up manoeuver is studied with the pitching axis located at the airfoil quarter chord. Simulations are performed in two steps. In the first step, the airfoil is kept static at a prescribed angle of attack ( $=4^{\circ }$ ). In the second step, a ramp function is used to smoothly increase the pitch rate from zero to the selected value and then the pitch rate is held constant until the angle of attack goes past the lift-stall point. The solver is verified against experiments for flow over a static NACA 0012 airfoil. Static simulation results of all airfoil geometries are also compared against XFOIL predictions with a generally favourable agreement. FDL3DI predicts two-stage transition for thin airfoils (9 % and 12 %), which is not observed in the XFOIL results. The dynamic simulations show that the onset of dynamic stall is marked by the bursting of the laminar separation bubble (LSB) in all the cases. However, for the thickest airfoil tested, the reverse flow region spreads over most of the airfoil and reaches the LSB location immediately before the LSB bursts and dynamic stall begins, suggesting that the stall could be triggered by the separated turbulent boundary layer. The results suggest that the boundary between different classifications of dynamic stall, particularly leading edge stall versus trailing edge stall, is blurred. The dynamic-stall onset mechanism changes gradually from one to the other with a gradual change in some parameters, in this case, airfoil thickness. 
    more » « less
  3. Abstract

    We present a comparison of instruments measuring nitrogen oxide species from an aircraft during the 2015 Wintertime INvestigation of Transport, Emissions, and Reactivity (WINTER) campaign over the northeast United States. Instrument techniques compared here include chemiluminescence (CL), thermal dissociation laser‐induced fluorescence (TD‐LIF), cavity ring‐down spectroscopy (CRDS), high‐resolution time of flight, iodide‐adduct chemical ionization mass spectrometry (ICIMS), and aerosol mass spectrometry. Species investigated include NO2, NO, total nitrogen oxides (NOy), N2O5, ClNO2, and HNO3. Particulate‐phase nitrate is also included for comparisons of HNO3and NOy. Instruments generally agreed within reported uncertainties, with individual flights sometimes showing much better agreement than the data set taken as a whole, due to flight‐to‐flight slope changes. NO measured by CRDS and CL showed an average relative slope of 1.16 ± 0.01 across all flights, which is outside of combined uncertainties. The source of the error was not identified. For NO2measured by CRDS and TD‐LIF the average was 1.02 ± 0.00; for NOymeasured by CRDS and CL the average was 1.01 ± 0.00; and for N2O5measured by CRDS and ICIMS the average was 0.89 ± 0.01. NOybudget closure to within 20% is demonstrated. We observe nonlinearity in NO2and NOycorrelations at concentrations above ~30 ppbv that may be related to the NO discrepancy noted above. For ClNO2there were significant differences between ICIMS and TD‐LIF, potentially due in part to the temperature used for thermal dissociation. Although the fraction of particulate nitrate measured by the TD‐LIF is not well characterized, it improves comparisons to include particulate measurements.

     
    more » « less
  4. The continuous increase in demanding for availability and ultra-reliability of low-latency and broadband wireless connections is instigating further research in the standardization of next-generation mobile systems. 6G networks, among other benefits, should offer global ubiquitous mobility thanks to the utilization of the Space segment as an intelligent yet autonomous ecosystem. In this framework, multi-layered networks will take charge of providing connectivity by implementing Cloud-Radio Access Network (C-RAN) functionalities on heterogeneous nodes distributed over aerial and orbital segments. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), High-Altitude Plat-forms (HAPs), and small satellites compose the Space ecosystem encompassing the 3D networks. Recently, a lot of interest has been raised about splitting operations to distribute baseband processing functionalities among such nodes to balance the computational load and reduce the power consumption. This work focuses on the hardware development of C-RAN physical (PHY-) layer operations to derive their computational and energy demand. More in detail, the 5G Downlink Shared Channel (DLSCH) and the Physical Downlink Shared Channel (PDSCH) are first simulated in MATLAB environment to evaluate the variation of computational load depending on the selected splitting options and number of antennas available at transmitter (TX) and receiver (RX) side. Then, the PHY-layer processing chain is software-implemented and the various splitting options are tested on low-cost processors, such as Raspberry Pi (RP) 3B+ and 4B. By overclocking the RPs, we compute the execution time and we derive the instruction count (IC) per program for each considered splitting option so to achieve the mega instructions per second (MIPS) for the expected processing time. Finally, by comparing the performance achieved by the employed RPs with that of Nvidia Jetson Nano (JN) processor used as benchmark, we shall discuss about size, weight, power and cost (SWaP-C)... 
    more » « less
  5. The importance of alternative methods for measuring the Hubble constant, such as time-delay cosmography, is highlighted by the recent Hubble tension. It is paramount to thoroughly investigate and rule out systematic biases in all measurement methods before we can accept new physics as the source of this tension. In this study, we perform a check for systematic biases in the lens modelling procedure of time-delay cosmography by comparing independent and blind time-delay predictions of the system WGD 2038−4008 from two teams using two different software programs:GLEEandLENSTRONOMY. The predicted time delays from the two teams incorporate the stellar kinematics of the deflector and the external convergence from line-of-sight structures. The un-blinded time-delay predictions from the two teams agree within 1.2σ, implying that once the time delay is measured the inferred Hubble constant will also be mutually consistent. However, there is a ∼4σdiscrepancy between the power-law model slope and external shear, which is a significant discrepancy at the level of lens models before the stellar kinematics and the external convergence are incorporated. We identify the difference in the reconstructed point spread function (PSF) to be the source of this discrepancy. When the same reconstructed PSF was used by both teams, we achieved excellent agreement, within ∼0.6σ, indicating that potential systematics stemming from source reconstruction algorithms and investigator choices are well under control. We recommend that future studies supersample the PSF as needed and marginalize over multiple algorithms or realizations for the PSF reconstruction to mitigate the systematics associated with the PSF. A future study will measure the time delays of the system WGD 2038−4008 and infer the Hubble constant based on our mass models.

     
    more » « less