This brief presents a 59.5 MHz negative resistanceoscillator for high-temperature operation. The oscillator employs an in-house 4H-SiC BJT, integrated with the requiredcircuit passives on a low-temperature co-fired ceramic substrate. Measurements show that the oscillator operates from room-temperature up to 400 C. The oscillator delivers an output◦power of 11.2 dBm into a 50 Ω load at 25 C, which decreases to 8.4 dBm at 400 C. The oscillation frequency varies by 3.3% in the entire temperature range. The oscillator is biased witha collector current of 35 mA from a 12 V supply and has amaximum DC power consumption of 431 mW.

Impedance spectroscopy is a commonly used mea-surement technique for electrical characterization of a sample-under-test over a wide frequency range. Most measurementmethods employ a sine wave excitation generator, which implies apoint-by-point frequency sweep and a complex readout architec-ture. This paper presents a fast, wide-band, measurement methodfor impedance spectroscopy based on linear system identification.The main advantage of the proposed method is the low hardwarecomplexity, which consists of a 3-level pulse waveform, aninverting voltage amplifier and a general purpose ADC. A proof-of-concept prototype, which is implemented with off-the-shelfcomponents, achieves an estimation fit of approximately 96%.The prototype operation is validated electrically using knownRC component values and tested in real application conditions.

Monolithic 3-D (M3D) integration technology has demonstrated significant area reduction in digital systems. Recently, its applications to other fields have been considered as well. To fully investigate the potential of M3D for radio-frequency/analog-mixed signal (RF/AMS) circuits and systems, the behavior of inductors in this technology needs to be evaluated. Toward this, in this paper, the effect of M3D integration on their inductance densities and quality factors has been analyzed. The impact of shields on M3D inductors has been investigated, as well as the shunting of multiple metal layers to form multimetal inductors. In an attempt to improve the area efficiency of M3D RF/AMS circuits, the potential of placing bottom-tier blocks underneath top-tier inductors has been identified, and a set of guidelines has been proposed to maximize the inter-tier electromagnetic isolation. These guidelines deal with the suitable position of both low- and high-frequency blocks, their wiring, as well as the type of shield that is needed between them and the inductors. To prove the efficiency of these guidelines, an array of bottom-tier resistors has been placed underneath a top-tier inductor, resulting in more than 50 dB of inter-tier isolation for frequencies up to 20 GHz.

This letter reports on a fully integrated 2-linear voltage regulator operational in a wide temperature range from 25 °C up to 500 °C fabricated in 4H-SiC technology. The circuit provides a stable output voltage with less than 1% variation in the entire temperature range. This letter demonstrates the first power supply solution providing both high-temperature (up to 500 °C) and high-load driving capabilities (up to 2).

This paper presents a delta-sigma based readout architecture targeting electrocortical recording in brain stimulation applications. The proposed architecture can accurately record a peak input signal up to 240 mV in a power-efficient manner without saturating or employing offset rejection techniques. The readout architecture consists of a delta-sigma modulator with an embedded analog front-end. The proposed architecture achieves a total harmonic distortion of -95 dB by employing a current-steering DAC and a multi-bit quantizer implemented as a tracking ADC. A system prototype is implemented in a 0.18 μm CMOS triple-well process and has a total power consumption of 54 μW. Measurement results, across 10 packaged samples, show approximately 14-ENOB over a 300Hz bandwidth with an input referred noise of 5.23 μVrms, power-supply/common-mode rejection ratio of 100 dB/98 dB and an input impedance larger than 94 MΩ.

This letter presents an active down-conversion mixer for high-temperature communication receivers. The mixer is based on an in-house developed 4H-SiC BJT and down-converts a narrow-band RF input signal centered around 59 MHz to an intermediate frequency of 500 kHz. Measurements show that the mixer operates from room temperature up to 500 °C. The conversion gain is 15 dB at 25 °C, which decreases to 4.7 dB at 500 °C. The input 1-dB compression point is 1 dBm at 25 °C and −2.5 dBm at 500 °C. The mixer is biased with a collector current of 10 mA from a 20 V supply and has a maximum DC power consumption of 204 mW. High-temperature reliability evaluation of the mixer shows a conversion gain degradation of 1.4 dB after 3-hours of continuous operation at 500 °C.

The placement of bottom tier blocks under top-tierinductors could significantly improve the area-efficiency of M3DRF/AMS circuits, paving the way for new applications of thisintegration technology. This work investigates the potential ofplacing digital blocks in the bottom tier, underneath top tierinductors. A design-technology co-optimization flow is appliedand a number of design guidelines are suggested. These guidelinesensure high electromagnetic isolation between the two tiers, withminimum penalties on the loading of bottom tier wires, as wellas on the inductor’s performance.

This paper presents a two-stage small signal intermediate frequency amplifier for high-temperature communication systems. The proposed amplifier is implemented using in-house silicon carbide bipolar technology. Measurements show that the proposed amplifier can operate from room temperature up to 251 °C. At a center frequency of 54.6 MHz, the amplifier has a gain of 22 dB at room temperature, which decreases gradually to 16 dB at 251 °C. Throughout the measured temperature range, it achieves an input and output return loss of less than-7 and-11 dB, respectively. The amplifier has a 1-dB output compression point of about 1.4 dBm, which remains fairly constant with temperature. Each amplifier stage is biased with a collector current of 10 mA and a base-collector voltage of 3 V. Under the aforementioned biasing, the maximum power dissipation of the amplifier is 221 mW.

A fully differential switched-capacitor circuit that combines the functionality of a voltage buffer and an integrator is proposed. The employed switching scheme exhibits intrinsic flicker noise canceling properties, whereas conventional techniques require additional circuit components. The circuit has been designed in a 0.18 μm CMOS process for 1.8 V supply. The estimated power consumption is 13.5 μW, while the occupied area is 121×442 μm². Area-efficient design is achieved by exploiting the correlation between the effective noise bandwidth and noise floor density in the proposed circuit. The sampled input referred noise floor is −133 dBV/√Hz, which is remarkably low when considering that the sampling capacitance is just 1.8 pF.

This brief presents an integrated high-purity current signal generator (SG), part of a bioimpedance spectroscopy system that performs measurements in the frequency range from 1 kHz to 2 MHz, and it is able to measure bioimpedance values from 100 Omega to 1 M Omega. The SG is implemented in a 0.18-mu m CMOS process, it is powered by a single 1.8 V voltage source, and occupies a total area of 1.62 mm(2). It is able to generate single-frequency signals from 1 kHz to 2 MHz in 12 steps logarithmically spaced. High signal purity is achieved by using a second-order low-pass filter, with a bandwidth that can be programmed from 4 kHz to 8 MHz, in 12 points logarithmically spaced. The SG's power consumption varies from 750 mu W, at the lowest frequencies and gain, to 2.06 mW at the highest frequencies and gain. The output current levels can be modified from 130 nA up to 10 mu A in five programmable steps (9.5 dB per step). The SG achieves a spurious-free dynamic range larger than 40 dB while covering almost three decades in frequency. Such performance enables measurements with errors below 1%, as it is required for accurate bioimpedance measurements in many medical applications.