JHU MMIC Design EE787 Course

The MMIC Design course is a graduate Electrical Engineering class at Johns Hopkins University taught by Craig Moore and John Penn.  Students learn about Monolithic Microwave Integrated Circuit Design (MMIC) during the first half of the semester and then apply that knowledge on a MMIC design project.  This year's student projects are shown as layouts and reports below.  Gary Wray of Agilent EEsof provided software support.  TriQuint Semiconductor provided the design library for Agilent's ADS design tool and is fabricating the GaAs ICs during the beginning of 2004.  Designs were checked using ICEDs DRC and LVS capabilities.  Students will return to test the fabricated ICs in early-2004.

MMIC DESIGN EE 525.787 FALL 2003--STUDENT PROJECTS

This year’s project for the MMIC Design class at The Johns Hopkins University is a simplex transceiver for the C-band industrial, scientific, and medical (ISM) band.  The down conversion scheme uses a single FET frequency converter, which produces a baseband output at 0.5 to 20 MHz.  The VCO serves as the receive LO as well as the C-band frequency source in the transmit mode.  QPSK modulation is introduced by a 2 bit quadrature phase shifter, switching at up to 10 Mbps.  C-band SPDT switches are employed to route receive and transmit signals and the VCO appropriately.  The receive chain consists of an LNA, a 3 bit attenuator for AGC, and a post amplifier in cascade.  The transmit path employs a driver amplifier and a 2 bit phase shifter feeding a ¼ watt power amplifier.  Nine unique MMIC designs make up the ten chip C-band transceiver.  Each design is to be contained on a 60 mil square die in the TQS TRx process.  The proposed block diagram is shown below.

FALL 2003 MMIC Projects--C Band Simplex Transceiver

Fall 2003 MMIC Projects--Overview

Fall 2003 MMIC Projects--Layouts

Low Noise Amplifier Report--Ty Moore and Bill Moser

Low Noise Amplifier Layout--Ty Moore and Bill Moser

Post Amplifier Report--Henry Jeffress and Jay Walters

Post Amplifier Layout--Henry Jeffress and Jay Walters

Driver Amplifier Report--John Davidson and Jeff Katz

Driver Amplifier Layout--John Davidson and Jeff Katz

Mixer Report--Brad Mason

Mixer Layout--Brad Mason

QPSK Modulator Report--Aaron Johns

QPSK Modulator Layout--Aaron Johns

TR Switch Report--Ben Baker and John Long

TR Switch Layout--Ben Baker and John Long

EE 525.801 Special Project FALL 2003

VCO Report--Mark Petty

VCO ADS Layout--Mark Petty

VCO AWR Layout--Mark Petty

JHU MMIC Design EE787 Fall 2003 Results

    Following will be the test results of the MMIC chips designed in the Fall 2003 MMIC class after fabrication (Winter 2004) and test (Spring 2004).  The chips make up an C-Band simplex transceiver system for the Industrial, Scientific, Medical band of 5725-5875 MHz..

Measured Results--Fall 2003 MMICs