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IEEE MICROWAVE AND WIRELESS COMPONENTS LETTERS
A CMOS Ultrawideband Pulse Generator
for 3–5 GHz Applications
Ruibing Dong, Member, IEEE, H. Kanaya, Member, IEEE, and Ramesh K. Pokharel, Member, IEEE
Abstract— A low-power ultrawideband (UWB) pulse generator
based on pulsed oscillator architecture for 3–5 GHz applications
is proposed. The pulsed oscillator is improved, so it realizes
binary phase shift keying (BPSK) modulation. Unlike ON – OFF
keying or pulse-position modulation (PPM), BPSK can scramble
the spectrum, so it can be used in high pulse rate applications
without having spectral line problem. The signal structure in
this design is burst mode of PPM+BPSK. The proposed UWB
pulse generator was successfully implemented on 0.18-μm CMOS
technology. The peak-to-peak amplitude of output pulse is about
220 mV with 50- load, the maximum power consumption
is 4 mW at a raw data rate of 7.8 Mbps and the energy
consumption is 32 pJ/pulse at a pulse rate of 125 Mpulses/s.
Index Terms— Balun, CMOS, low power, pulse generator,
pulsed oscillator, ultrawideband (UWB).
I. I NTRODUCTION
A S THE demand for low-power system is increasing
with the emerging applications such as sensor networks
and body area networks, impulse radio ultrawideband (IR-
UWB) communication is considered as a potential candidate
for such applications. However, to avoid the interference to
narrowband systems, the Federal Communications Commis-
sion requires that the power spectral density (PSD) must be
lower than −41.3 dBm/MHz in the 3.1–10.6 GHz band and
−75.3 dBm/MHz in the Global Position System (GPS)
band [1]. A lot of circuit topologies on CMOS with var-
ious modulation schemes were proposed to satisfy this
specification [2]–[8].
One of the most popular topologies is to employ pulsed
oscillator architecture because of its superiority in the power
and energy consumption [2]–[4]. This method features an
oscillator operating at the center frequency of the UWB
pulse, which can be switched rapidly. The baseband signal
modulates the local oscillator directly, so it is up-converted
to the radio frequency effectively [2]. The UWB pulse gen-
erators [3], [4] that employ ON - OFF keying (OOK) modula-
tion, cannot control the phase of output signal. Furthermore,
this modulation scheme produces discrete spectral lines in
the output power spectrum, especially when the pulse rate
is high [2]–[4]. This problem also exists in pulse-position
Manuscript received January 8, 2017; revised March 3, 2017; accepted
March 15, 2017. This work was supported in part by a Grant-in-Aid for
Scientific Research (C) under Grant 16K06301 and in part by the VLSI
Design and Education Center, University of Tokyo in collaboration with
CADENCE Corporation and Keysight Technologies. (Corresponding author:
Ruibing Dong.)
The authors are with the Graduate School of Information Science
and Electrical Engineering, Kyushu University, Fukuoka 819-0395,
Japan (e-mail: csdrbster@gmail.com; Kanaya@ed.kyushu-u.ac.jp;
pokharel@ed.kyushu-u.ac.jp).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/LMWC.2017.2701306
1531-1309 © 2017 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
1
modulation (PPM) [5], [7]. To overcome this problem, spec-
trum scrambling techniques should be employed. It is reported
that the spectral lines can be suppressed by the combination
of binary phase shift keying (BPSK) and PPM [5], [7].
To avoid interfering with GPS, the PSD on GPS band should
be suppressed greatly. However, it is not easy to realize on-chip
with a simple structure. To get large suppression, off-chip
filter was needed in [5], [7], and [8]. The suppression on
GPS band was not significant in [4]; antenna was co-designed
in [6].
This letter proposes a pulsed oscillator-based UWB pulse
generator that realizes a burst mode of BPSK+PPM modula-
tion with large suppression on GPS band. It maintains low
power consumption and overcomes the spectral line problem
that exists in OOK and PPM modulation. The architecture
mainly consists of modified ring oscillators and an on-chip
balun with high pass characteristic [9] as a filtering compo-
nent. The modified ring oscillator can be preset to control the
phase of the output signal, so BPSK modulation can be real-
ized. Also, large suppression on GPS band is realized without
using extra filter because of the high pass characteristic of
balun.
II. D ESIGN OF UWB P ULSE G ENERATOR
To demonstrate the concept, an UWB pulse generator is
designed using 0.18-μm CMOS technology. The signal struc-
ture adopts burst mode PPM+BPSK. For example, one symbol
time has 128-ns length, and is divided into two intervals.
If 0–64-ns interval contains pulse burst, it means data “0”;
and if 64–128 ns contains pulse burst, it means data “1.”
In this design, one burst contains 16 pulses, and each pulse
lasts for about 2 ns. The PPM is for data transmission. The
BPSK may not carry data but is for the purpose of scrambling
output PSD to make it more smooth [5]. The proposed UWB
pulse generator, shown in Fig. 1, is constructed from four
blocks: control circuit; pulse generator core; inverter string;
and balun.
The control circuit receives external signals and generates
control signal for pulsed ring oscillator. The logic for PPM
and BPSK control are marked with gray in Fig. 1, whose
simulated time diagram is shown in Fig. 2(a). The 15.6-Mbps
input control signal is divided into two streams, one is for
PPM and the other is for BPSK. The stream for BPSK is
spread to phase ctrl by a linear feedback shift register (LFSR)
that generates pseudorandom bits. The LFSR together with
the extra signal make the phase ctrl randomly. The stream for
PPM is exclusive or with a 7.8-MHz clock that has 50% duty
cycle. Then it is spread to Vc to switch the ring oscillator.
The data rate and the pulse bandwidth, which determines by
the pulse duration time, are both controlled by the trigger
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2 IEEE MICROWAVE AND WIRELESS COMPONENTS LETTERS
Fig. 1. Block diagram of proposed UWB pulse generator.
Fig. 2. Simulated waveform. (a) Control circuit. (b) Core circuit.
frequency. When it is set to 500 MHz, the data rate is about
7.8 Mbps, and the pulse duration is about 2 ns.
The core circuit consists of two pulsed ring oscillators.
It is able to switch ON / OFF state rapidly, which is so fast
that high level of side lobes appears on spectrum. Therefore,
the UWB pulse should be filtered. For the purposes of low
power consumption, the width of M1–M6 is set to be the
minimum that can maintain resonance at the highest channel.
M7 and M8 have the same current capability, so the startup
time of out-phase pulses is similar to each other. Because ring
oscillator is sensitive to process and temperature, the variety
should be estimated by Monte Carlo simulation. Its resonance
frequency is tuned by changing the supply voltage, which is
independent of other voltage supplies, so that the output power
Fig. 3. Output PSD of UWB impulse generator and S-parameter of balun.
is not affected when the frequency changes. Fig. 2(b) shows
the simulation results of core circuit. The delay cell of ring
oscillator is controlled by V c and V¯C . When V c is high, the
oscillation starts. When V c is low, the oscillation stops. The
polarization of UWB pulse is controlled by phase ctrl. The
node Na can be preset to Vdd or ground through switch S1
and single-pole double-throw (SPDT) switch. Supposed that
SPDT switch is connected to Vdd, the nodes Na, Nb, and Nc
are preset to Vdd, ground, and Vdd, respectively. So when the
oscillation starts up, the output signal P start from Vdd and P̄
start from zero voltage. While, if the Na is preset to ground, P
will start from ground, and out-phase pulse can be generated.
As shown in Fig. 2(b), the pulse on the right is out-phasing
with the one on the left. A differential scheme is adopted to
further enhance the phase accuracy of BPSK.
Finally, the differential signal is amplified by an inverter
string and combined by a balun with capacitors connected in
series [9]. The balun has third-order high pass performance
because the capacitors connected to the on-chip balun provide
two transmission zeroes at low frequency. As shown in Fig. 3,
insertion loss is −5 dB at 3.1 GHz, and −24 dB at 1.6 GHz.
Thus, the suppression is as high as 19 dB.
The proposed UWB pulse generator was fabricated in
0.18-μm CMOS technology, and its die photograph is shown
in Fig. 4. The die area is 0.85 × 0.65 mm2 including test pads.
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DONG et al.: CMOS ULTRAWIDEBAND PULSE GENERATOR FOR 3–5 GHz APPLICATIONS
TABLE I
P ERFORMANCE C OMPARISON W ITH P REVIOUSLY P UBLISHED W ORKS
Fig. 4. Photograph of fabricated chip.
Fig. 5. Measurement output waveform (w/o compensation).
III. M EASUREMENT R ESULTS
The UWB pulse generator was measured on wafer. The
measurement output waveform is shown in Fig. 5. The data
“0” and “1” have different pulse position. One burst contains
16 UWB pulses. The points in the enlarge view identify the
polarization of the first oscillation cycle, which is preset by the
phase ctrl signal. The time between two nearby pulses is about
4 ns. The envelop of pulses changes smoothly because of the
filtering effect of the balun. The peak-to-peak voltage of UWB
pulse is about 220 mV with 50- load after compensation.
When the trigger frequency is 500 MHz, the data rate is
7.8 Mbps and the pulse rate is 125 Mpps. It can be scaled
in a range of about 20% while the output PSD can be
maintained well. The measured PSD at 7.8 Mbps together with
the simulation results without BPSK scrambling are shown
in Fig. 3. The PSD does not contain obvious spectral line.
The channel was switched by varying the supply volgate
3
of oscillator. As a potential improvement in future, digitally
controlled ring oscillator would be better [10]. The −10-dB
bandwidth is about 1.2 GHz. The power dissipation is 4 mW
at 4.5 GHz center frequency. The DC peak is four times of
average power consumption, about 16 mW. When no pulse
is transmitted, it can be turned off and no static current is
consumed. Table I shows the performance comparison with
previously reported works. It shows that the proposed UWB
pulse generator has low energy consumption, and is suitable
for low power applications.
IV. C ONCLUSION
A 3–5 GHz UWB pulse generator based on pulsed oscillator
structure with a new topology is proposed. The pulsed oscilla-
tor is improved to be able to control the phase of UWB pulse,
thus burst mode of PPM+BPSK modulation is realized. And
the PSD on GPS band is greatly suppressed by an on-chip
balun with a high pass characteristic. The maximum power
consumption is 4 mW at a raw data rate of 7.8 Mbps, and the
energy consumption per pulse is 32 pJ/pulse at a pulse rate of
125 Mpps. It is expected to be useful for low power and high
pulse rate incoherent IR-UWB radio communication.
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