A CMOS application-specified-integrated-circuit for 40 GHz high-electron-mobility-transistors automatic biasing

M De Matteis; M De Blasi; E A Vallicelli; M Zannoni; M Gervasi; A Bau; A Passerini; A Baschirotto

doi:10.1063/1.4975177

A CMOS application-specified-integrated-circuit for 40 GHz high-electron-mobility-transistors automatic biasing

Rev Sci Instrum. 2017 Feb;88(2):024702. doi: 10.1063/1.4975177.

Authors

M De Matteis¹, M De Blasi², E A Vallicelli¹, M Zannoni¹, M Gervasi¹, A Bau¹, A Passerini¹, A Baschirotto¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Physics, University of Milano Bicocca, Piazza della Scienza 3, 20126 Milano, Italy.
² TDK_EPC, Copenhagen, Denmark.

PMID: 28249488
DOI: 10.1063/1.4975177

Abstract

This paper presents the design and the experimental results of a CMOS Automatic Control System (ACS) for the biasing of High-Electron-Mobility-Transistors (HEMT). The ACS is the first low-power mixed-signal Application-Specified-Integrated-Circuit (ASIC) able to automatically set and regulate the operating point of an off-chip 6 HEMT Low-Noise-Amplifiers (LNAs), hence it composes a two-chip system (the ACS+LNAs) to be used in the Large Scale Polarization Explorer (LSPE) stratospheric balloon for Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) signal observation. The hereby presented ACS ASIC provides a reliable instrumentation for gradual and very stable LNAs characterization, switching-on, and operating point (<4 mV accuracy). Moreover, it simplifies the electronic instrumentation needed for biasing the LNAs, since it replaces several off-the-shelf and digital programmable device components. The ASIC prototype has been implemented in a CMOS 0.35 μm technology (12 mm² area occupancy). It operates at 4 kHz clock frequency. The power consumption of one-channel ASIC (biasing one LNA) is 3.6 mW, whereas 30 mW are consumed by a single LNA device.