0000000001045457
AUTHOR
Daniele Lupo
Influence of Active Device Nonlinearities on the Determination of Adler's Injection.Locking Q-Factor
The problem of the correct evaluation of Q-factor appearing in Adler's equation for injection-locking is addressed. Investigation has shown that recent results presented in the literature, while extending applicability of the original method, do not completely account for nonlinear effects occurring when two-port active devices are involved. To overcome such limitation, use can be made of a newly developed theory in the dynamical complex envelope domain, capable of providing first-approximation exact dynamical models of driven quasi-sinusoidal oscillators. Some preliminary results are presented here concerning a class of injection-locked oscillators with single-loop feedback type configurat…
Synthetic approach to the design of wide-band microwave injection-locked amplifiers
In this work, a synthesis-based approach to the realization of wide-band microwave injection-locked amplifiers (ILA) is proposed. To this purpose, a transmission-type topology is combined with a feedback structure in which the "core ILA" is intentionally separated from the output (power) amplifier. A modular, matched, design of individual building blocks of the core ILA is then adopted, which allows their first-approximation exact modeling in the dynamical complex-envelope domain, following the theory earlier developed by Calandra-Sommariva. On this basis, analytic expressions for the main operating characteristics of the ILA (such as the locking bandwidth under small signal operation) are …
On the Theoretical Limits of Noise-Gain-Mismatch Tradeoff in the Design of Multi-Stage Cascaded Transistor Amplifiers
The problem of evaluating the limit performances of cascaded single-ended multi-stage transistor amplifiers is addressed. In particular, a theoretically rigorous approach is proposed for the determination of a family of optimal design curves (ODC's) which express the best (maximum optimal) noise-gain tradeoff that can be achieved - at each operating frequency - when a simultaneous constraint on amplifier input VSWR is accounted for.
Accelerated Analysis of Low-Level Injection Operation for Transistor-Based Oscillating Amplifiers
The problem of the accelerated analysis of oscillating amplifiers is addressed. To achieve both computational efficiency and adequate accuracy also in case of transmission-type, transistor-based, circuit structures, a novel approach is proposed which makes use of a general reduced-order model of the injected oscillator. A perturbation-refined analysis method is thus applied, which permits to derive the first-order exact set of differential equations that describes the system behavior in the fundamental-frequency complex-envelope domain. As illustrated by the RF Meissner driven oscillator example presented, the devised approach achieves the stated goals, and lends itself as a convenient, des…
Approach to the Design of Transmission-Type Injection-Locked Microwave Oscillators through Behavioral Block Modeling
In this work, an attempt is made toward the development of a systematic design method for the performance- driven dimensioning of the various elements comprising the structure of modern transistor-based microwave injection- locked oscillators with transmission-type topologies (TILOs). The proposed approach is based on the use of appropriate diakoptics of the various circuit blocks into a matched environment, and their behavioral modeling in the fundamental- frequency dynamical complex envelope domain with the help of standard circuit and E.M. simulation CAD tools. This will permit, in the end, to obtain closed-form expressions for the main TILO performances in terms of the design parameters…
Computationally Efficient Analysis of Microwave Injection-Locked Amplifiers
In this paper, some preliminary results on a novel approach to the analysis of injection-locked amplifiers are presented. The proposed method is based on a behavioral block modeling of the circuit in the fundamental-frequency dynamical phasor domain. The first-order exact perturbation refined treatment developed provides, in the end, explicit equations describing the entrained oscillation amplitude and phase dynamics. A secondary simplification then can be adopted in case of low-level injection, to determine a closed form expression for the locking bandwidth, generalizing the well known Adler’s one. By virtue of its semi-analytical nature, the proposed approach turns out to be much more eff…
A DRO-based X-band injection-locked amplifier without input non-reciprocal elements
Conventional design of injection-locked amplifiers (ILA's) implies the use of a non-reciprocal (ferrite, usually) element for separating the input signal from the synchronized output signal. In this paper a novel topological structure is proposed which permitted the realization of a wide-band, transmission-type, ILA with no need for separating input-port isolator or preamplifier. The prototype, realized in HMIC technology, while intended only as demonstrator of the newly proposed approach in the design of ILA's, shows quite satisfactory performances at X-band, with a simple, compact and low-cost structure.
On the optimal design of multi-stage cascaded transistor amplifiers with noise, gain and mismatch constraints
The problem of evaluating the optimal performances of cascaded, unbalanced, multi-stage transistor amplifiers is addressed. In particular, a theoretically rigorous approach is proposed for the determination of a family of Optimal Design Curves (ODC's) which express the best noise-gain tradeoff that can be achieved - at each frequency and device operating condition - when a simultaneous constraint on amplifier input VSWR is accounted for. Such curves can be used as a more meaningful starting point in practical amplifier design in place of the approximate calculations so far employed for target performance or optimization goals determination.