EE 432/532 Microwave Circuit Design II

Instructor: Branimir Pejcinovic

Course Outline

This is a new syllabus!

This is the second part of two quarter sequence. Stated briefly, the goal is to introduce undergraduate and graduate students in electrical engineering to the principles and design of high frequency devices, circuits, and systems. Emphasis is on active circuits and devices, and amplifiers, oscillators and mixers in particular. More advanced lab sections on using MDS in circuit design and optimization are included. Practical aspects of GaAs circuit design will be discussed. Graduate students will do a design project that will be fabricated in TriQuint GaAs foundry. Seniors will do the same in the Capstone sequence projects.

Noise, broadband, power and multistage amplifiers: Wide band matching network design, Feed back amplifier, Power amps, Two-stage amps.(12 hrs.)
Active and passive semiconductor microwave devices and MMICs (Schottky diode, inductors, capacitors, resitors, MESFET, HBT). Principles of operation. Figures of merit. Trade-offs and applications. (8 hrs.).
GaAs MESFET circuit design: practical aspects. (4 hours)
Microwave Oscillator Design: One Port and Two Port Negative Resistance Oscillators, Design using large signal measurements, Oscillator topologies, oscillator characteristics. (6 hrs.)
Three CAD labs dealing with above topics.

Other information:

Textbooks: G. Gonzalez, Microwave Transistor Amplifiers: Analysis and Design, 2nd edition, Prentice Hall (ISBN 0-13-254335-4)

G.D. Vendelin, A.M. Pavio, U.L Rohde, Microwave Circuit Design: Using Linear and Nonlinear Techniques, Wiley-Interscience, ISBN: 0-471-58060-0, 1990.

Pre-requisites by topic: Wave propagation, transmission lines; basic semiconductor device operation (p-n junction, BJT, MOSFET); basic linear amplifier design, Smith-chart and S-parameters; working knowledge of MDS (HP CAD program).
Pre-requisite course: EE 431/531 Microwave Circuit Design I or equivalent.
Grading: based on quizes (10%), labs (25%), mid-term (30%) and final (35%). Graduate students do a project instead of the final.
Computer Usage: Homework and lab sections related to the design of high-frequency devices, circuits, and systems.

Course and Lab Notes

The files are currently in postscript format; the originals are usually written in LaTeX. For those of you who would like to get a postscript previewer, check out the the ghostview, ghostcript etc. site at: ghostview_site

**List of notes available for downloading or viewing**
Notes title:	PDF
Noise	noise.pdf
Broadband and Power amp design	broadbnd.pdf
GaAs Technology and MESFETs	mesfet.pdf
Oscillator Design	oscill.pdf

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!

**Lab notes available for downloading or viewing**
Lab #	PDF
4: Potentially unstable design	new_lab4.pdf
5: Amplifier design for noise	new_lab5.pdf
6: Oscillator design	new_lab6.pdf

Some notes on the files:

HTML versions are recommended for viewing. For printing use whatever works best for your setup.
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 .

A separate MDS file containing the workbenches and examples that are refered to in the lab notes can be obtained via anonymous ftp. Login by using "ftp ursula.ee.pdx.edu", followd by "anonymous" for login. Use your e-mail address for password. Once in, use "cd pub/users/faculty/brano/ee432" to get to the directory. Then transfer the file "labs_ee432.mds" via get command. Don't forget to set the file transfer to bin (just type "bin"). Put this *.mds file in the directory where you run MDS. With the new version of the file references for subcircuits should work - if you run into any problems, let me know.

Clarification for lab1: when creating a layout (section 2.2) use SUI by clicking on "Layout" in the menu. This should be done from the workbench that contains the design icon (in our example it is "simulate_subcircuit"). A dialog box comes up asking for the name of the layout icon: use the same name as the one for the design ("simulate_subcircuit" again). That way auto-layout knows where to go for schematic information. (Note: DO NOT use INSERT/LAYOUT to get a layout icon in workbench).

Program listed at the back of the Gonzalez's textbook is available as a fortran file (ummaad.f), or as a binary file that runs on our Sun sparcs (mad.bin). Same files are available for anonymous ftp, as explained above.

Comments on Graduate Students' Projects

A list of possible projects for graduate students includes, but is not limited to:

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).

These are suggested projects and others of your own design are possible. You can also be more specific than the above suggested topic. The students will be assigned in groups of three and a project given to the group. The group should produce a final design that can be submitted to TriQuint for fabrication. Start working on it sooner rather than later!

Additional info for projects: TriQuint

To give you some idea what is possible, here are two examples of previous student projects that resulted in designs that were fabricated at TriQuint.

Aydin Karsilayan: Design of an IF Amplifier.
Kurt Kulhanek: IF Amp .

If you would like to learn more about GaAs MESFET modeling, and TOM-2 (TriQuint's Own Model) in particular, have a look at this file: TOM-2 description . MDS does not have a bulit-in TOM-2 model but I've developed and tested one which you can download and utilize in your circuits. It was tested only for DC and AC paramteres and GD model was implemented but not tested and is not included. Unzip HA2_FET_models.zip into your MDS directory and include it onto your screen by using the MDS browser. If you'd like to develop TOM-2 model in your favorite simulator, check out TOM-2 verification . For those of you using MDS which only has TOM-1 models built in, here are some notes on using TOM-1 model with TOM-2 parameters: Appnote on TOM-1 . For additional documentation on TriQuint's process and design rules you need to contact me directly.

Additional info for projects: LPKF

For those of you who plan on using LPKF router (milling) machine, here is a report you should read:
S. Davis, R. Jones, B. Spry and B. Pejcinovic: ``Producing Microstrip Boards from MDS Design Files Using LPKF Milling Machine,'' senior project, 1996. You can download it in three file formats: pdf = tutorial.pdf , postscript = tutorial.ps and MS Word = tutorial.doc

Exam Schedule for Spring 1998, Friday June 12, 1998 (my office in PCAT 154A):

2PM: Farhat, Yahya + Sijercic, Edin
3PM: Sinha, Vineeta + Bihari, Jeevan
4PM: Hazzard, Shane + Goodson, Monty + Ahn, John

Last time to submit your reports is Friday at 10 AM. If you need more time to finish the project, let me know and I'll give you an incomplete. Plan on finishing in a couple of weeks. I *** WILL NOT *** accept reports that are more than one year old.

Other Info

My office hours are on Wednesday 1-3PM.Send e-mail if you can't make it on that day. Due to small number of undergraduate students, there will be no TA this quarter.

Usefull links

Microwaves & RF + other stuff: rf-microwaves (library contains recent articles published in this journal).
Microwave Journal (registration necessary, but it's free): Microwave Journal (library starts from 1996)
Check out H-P's site at www.tmo.hp.com/tmo/Notes/English/index.html where they have many good application notes. For some of the more basic stuff, you may want to check the following app note: AN 95-1.