Analysis and reduction of spurs in fractional N frequency synthesizers for wireless applications

无线通信是一项价值数十亿美元的国际业务。任何无线设备的核心都是高速射频集成电路，它实现无线电收发器。射频集成电路（rfic）构成了从手机到无线局域网、全球定位系统（GPS）、黑莓寻呼机等任何无线设备的一些关键启用技术。电路层面的深入研究仍在进行中，因为无线电的改进是必要的，以使rfic与数字技术更加兼容，并提供更低的功耗操作以延长电池寿命，同时提高无线电性能，以便向用户提供更高的数据速率（例如4G无线网络）。频率合成器是设计高性能无线电以满足新型无线应用需求的关键部件之一。频率合成器负责生成所需的参考，将高频射频信号转换回较低的频率，其中数据可以由数字信号处理器恢复。Skyworks已经将频率合成器确定为未来的关键使能技术。他们对新的改进架构非常感兴趣，这些架构将实现更好的性能，以满足更先进无线电不断增长的需求。此外，他们正在寻求与数字互补金属氧化物半导体（CMOS）工艺更兼容的新架构。这笔拨款将支持通过开发能够准确模拟杂散性能的先进模型来改进现有频率合成器架构的研究。一旦这些影响被正确理解，那么新的架构将被用来提高性能，这将被实验验证。拟议的项目将有助于确保加拿大正在进行的无线通信信息技术研究，为科学家和工程师提供就业机会。

Wireless communications is a multibillion dollar international business. At the core of any wireless device is the high speed radio frequency integrated circuit which implements the radio transceiver. Radio frequency integrated circuits (RFICs) form some of the key enabling technologies for any wireless device from a cell phone to a wireless local area network, global positioning systems (GPS), Blackberry pagers and many more. Intense research is still ongoing at the circuit level as improvements in radios are necessary to make RFICs more compatible with digital technologies, and provide lower power operation for longer battery life and at the same time increasing radio performance in order to deliver higher data rates to the user (for example 4G wireless networks). One of the key components necessary to designing a high performance radio necessary to meet the demands of new wireless applications is the frequency synthesizer. The frequency synthesizer is responsible for generating the reference needed to translate high frequency RF signals back to lower frequencies where the data can be recovered by the digital signal processor. Skyworks has identified the frequency synthesizer as a key enabling technology going forward. They are keenly interested in new improved architectures that will enable better performance to meet the ever increasing needs of more advanced radios. Additionally they are seeking new architectures which will be more compatible with digital complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) processes. This grant will support research to improve existing frequency synthesizer architectures through the development of advanced models capable of accurately modeling spurious performance. Once these effects are properly understood, then new architectures will be employed to improve performance which will be experimentally verified. The proposed project will help to ensure ongoing Canadian information technology research in wireless communication providing employment for scientists and engineers.