EE 431/531 Microwave Circuit Design I

EE 431/531 and EE 432/532 have undergone a major revision last year.  This description should be taken as the guide on what is actually going to be taught in this course. This is the first part of two quarter sequence and it deals with design and analysis of active (analog) microwave circuits. Topics include: Review of transmission lines, Design of microstrip matching networks, Amplifier analysis, Amplifier design for gain, stability and noise, High power and broad band design.

Also included are lab sections introducing the use of CAD tools (MDS by H-P) in circuit design and optimization. By the end of the course students should feel comfortable designing microwave circuits both via Smith charts and by using CAD tools. Instead of a final, graduate students do a project related to either the above areas or areas of students' interest but use of MDS in projects is encouraged. Project, labs, homeworks and mid- term form a basis for grading.

Finally, during the second part of the course, additional topics in general circuit design and Microwave Monolithic IC (MMIC) design will be covered. Graduate students will have the opportunity to work on a project that will be fabricated in TriQuint's GaAs foundry . This is a state of the art MMIC fabrication facility and this is a unique opportunity to get some true hands-on experience and work on real-life projects. Undergraduate students will be able to work on similar projects but within the Senior Design Project (formerly EE 406 course). I am open to having undergraduate students involved in projects, but you should be aware that in this case I expect "graduate" level of work, i.e., you are assumed to be capable of doing independent study and "research" and putting that into practice.

Here is the outline of the course:

• Review of transmission lines. Characteristic impedance, standing waves and wave propagation (2 hours)
• S-matrix: Relation other circuit matrices such as Z, H, ABCD etc. Emphasis on physical interpretations of elements of S-matrix. Many examples. (2 hours)
• Measurement of S-matrix and transistor characteristics. Signal Flow Graphs, Expressions for various gains of an amplifier. (4 hours).
• Smith Chart: Theory including the use of chart for negative resistance devices. Design of narrow band matching networks using the Smith Chart (abridged presentation). Microstrip line design. (8 hours)
• Amplifier Design: Basic Concepts such as Stability, Power gain, Gain Circles - Unilateral case, Unilateral Figure of Merit, Gain Circles - Bilateral - simultaneous conjugate match, Available, Operating, Transducer gain circles for design consideration. (6 hours)
• Low noise amplifier Design: discussion of noise circles, constant noise figures circles, tradeoff between noise figure and gain circles. (5 hours)
• Broad band amplifiers: Wide band matching network design, Feed back amplifier. (5 hours)
• High power amplifier design. Class A, B and C operation. Distortion. Two stage design. (5 hours)
• CAD labs dealing with above topics.

• Textbook: G. Gonzalez, Microwave Transistor Amplifiers: Analysis and Design, 2nd edition, Prentice Hall (ISBN 0-13-254335-4)
• Pre-requisites by topic: Maxwell's equations in general form, boundary conditions on differential equations, electromagnetic wave equations, familiarity with low frequency transmission lines, waveguides and resonators, and antennas; basic semiconductor device operation (p-n junction, BJT, MOSFET)
• Pre-requisite course: EE 331/332 or equivalent. A working knowledge or exposure to transmission line concepts is assumed.
• Grading: based on labs (25%), mid-term (35%) and final (40%). Graduate students do a project instead of the final. Homeworks will be assigned, but not graded.
• Computer Usage: Homework and lab sections related to the design of high frequency devices, circuits, and systems.

If you want to get an early start and do the labs right away, go ahead, but please don't expect much help before we actually cover the material needed!
 

Some notes on the files:

• HTML versions are recommended for viewing. For printing use whatever works best for your setup.
• Lab 1 - Note that postscript and pdf versions have no screen shots! HTML version(s) have graphics saved in GIF files.
• For those of you who don't have easy access to S-chart, have a look at this postscript version. This will be taken out after a week or two. You can download a black and white version of Z-Smith chart smith_chart1.ps or a color version of YZ-Smith chart smithcol1.ps .

 

• Obtain accounts both at OCATE and PSU !
• Open two xterm windows on your OCATE computer; use one for local work and the other to log in to PSU.
• After logging in at OCATE, type "rlogin -l your_PSU_user_name full_computer_name" . The last item "full_computer_name" can be any computer in EE dept. at PSU: I suggest ka.ee.pdx.edu, flotsam.ee.pdx.edu and jetsam.ee.pdx.edu.
• After typing in your PSU password, you'll have to install MDS. Type "addpkg" and look for item that looks like "18: hp_hfds-7.1 - HP 85150B Microwave and RF Design Systems Release 7.1" and type in the number (in this case 18) when prompted.
• Log out and log in again into your PSU account.
• Every time that you want to run MDS, you will have to set up your windowing environment on your OCATE computer to allow other computers/users to display their graphics on your local (OCATE) display. To enable this, you have to type "xhost +" . On the PSU side, once you log in to one of the PSU computers, you will have to type "setenv DISPLAY your_OCATE_computer:0.0" where your_OCATE_computer will depend on which computer you are using at OCATE and will be something like "ultra35.ocate.edu" so that your command would look like "setenv DISPLAY ultra35.ocate.edu:0.0" . This will send all your MDS graphics to your local display.
• In your PSU account, create an MDS directory by typing "mkdir MDS" and type "cd MDS". Once you are there, type "mds &" and mds will run in the background but you should see its screen appearing soon (it may take a little while until MDS initializes). From now on, always utilize MDS directory when running MDS; otherwise, a default system will be re-created in the directory where you start MDS.

• Antennas for 2.4GHz (or other high frequency band) hand-held or mobile operation: characteristics, design tradeoffs, uses.
• Passive component modeling and inductor design for MMICs (TriQuint process in particular): inductors, capacitors, resistors
• Comparison of existing DRC (design rule check) in MDS and what HA2 TriQuint process requires. Differences and possible solutions on how to implement new DRC in MDS.
• Using Momentum (one of the MDS tools) to simulate MMIC inductors.
• Analysis and design of microstrip filters (possible implementation on router)
• Active filters
• Fabricating and characterizing microstrip transmission lines and circuits (e.g. filters) fabricated on our router (requires some additional measurement equipment, possibly from your company. Network analyzer should be available in the Spring quarter.)
• Active microwave devices
• Noise in active microwave devices
• Power combining
• Signal distortion in microwave amplifiers
• Distortion in active devices

Note: Next quarter you will have to do an actual circuit design for TriQuint foundry, from beginning to end. If you can think of some application that you would like to see implemented, perhaps you can break it up into two parts and do one this quarter. To give you some idea what to think about, here are some possible projects for the next quarter (just brief descriptions):

• Transmitter to send signals to electric sign on building,
• Transmitter/receiver for hospital operating room suite, sending airborne particulate count,
• Vending machine status transmission to a central location
• "Lost child" locator, i.e. receiver/transmitter to locate a missing child (say, in Disneyland :-) )
• IF amplifier for DBS (digital broadcasting system).

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Other Info

My office hours are Tuesday/Thursday 1:30 - 3:00 PM. I will hold separate lab help sessions; time is yet to be determined. There is no TA for this term.