A CMOS QPSK Demodulator Frontend for GPON

Authors:	Chen, Fei
Files in This Item: File Description Size Format Chen_Fei_201006_MASc.pdf 4.76 MB Adobe PDF
Keywords:	frontend QPSK demodulation GPON CMOS VCO mixer
Issue Date:	2010
Series/Report no.:	Canadian theses
Abstract:	This thesis examines the design of a QPSK demodulator frontend for GPON transceiver at end user's side. Since lowering the cost of the terminal transceivers in an access network like GPON is a key requirement, CMOS technology is used and several area-saving design techniques are applied. The designed frontend circuit saved more than 80% area of the key components like the mixers and the QVCO than some published designs which can also fit the application. A measurement in frequency domain and a simulation in time domain verified that this frontend is able to demodulate a QPSK signal with a data rate as high as 5 Gbit/s. Two structures of quadrature oscillators are firstly presented and compared. One is an LC QVCO centered at 5 GHz, which has a tuning range of 3 GHz, a phase noise of -100.8 dBc/Hz at 1 MHz offset, and an area of 0.15 mm2 excluding pads. The other is a ring QVCO which only takes an area of 0.019 mm2. But it has a higher phase noise of -81 dBc/Hz at 1 MHz offset. Then two broadband mixers are described separately. The first one provides a high conversion gain, but its input linearity is insufficient to meet the input power requirement. The second mixer obtains required input linearity but with a trade-off of conversion gain. Both mixers have a broadband input impedance match from 2 GHz to 8 GHz. The first mixer has a conversion gain of 8.5 dB and an input 1 dB compresion point at -17 dBm. The second mixer has a conversion gain of -7 dB with an on-chip buffer or -2.1 dB without buffer, but an input 1 dB compresion point at -5 dBm. A frontend circuit is lastly presented. It integrates the compact ring QVCO, two broadband mixers with high input linearity, and two second-order LC ladder low pass filters. A Frequency domain measurement shows the expected spectrum down conversion of a 2.5 Gsym/s QPSK signal centered at 5 GHz. The whole frontend circuit including pads takes 1 mm2 area, and consumed 157 mW power.