Date of Award

2006

Document Type

Master Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Engineering (Research)

Department

Electronic Engineering

First Advisor

Dr. John Barrett

Abstract

The Ultra Wideband Technology, although derives from the early works on time-domain electromagnetics, only recently attracted the attention of the research and industrial institutions, mainly thanks to establishing a proper frequency mask by Federal Communication Commission. The FCC regulations allocate the immense 3.1 - 10.6 GHz microwave band that has never been accessible in a one segment before.

The intrinsic features of the UWB radio such as low power, immunity to multipath fading and eavesdropping, high 3D resolution capability and ability of'seeing' through the solid obstacles with addition to achievable very high data rates, makes it very attractive for many commercial, medical and military applications. Therefore, the technology already finds its application in short data transfer and object positioning systems such as sensor networks, non-invasive medical sensors and imaging radars.

Regardless the application and receiver configuration, the low noise amplifier is required to boost the received signal appearing at the antenna's aperture to the appropriate level which ensures unproblematic detection and retrieving the data. This thesis, therefore, is intended to give a detailed insight into the LNA design and measurement issues. It provides all the fundamental theory that is essential to understand the bandwidth, gain, stability and noise figure aspects of the LNA design.

The thesis is organized in chapters, which are dedicated to the separate topics that highlight the current technologies and methodologies used in the microwave design, as well as provide the detailed description of the entire LNA design process from the model and circuit level through the full 3D simulations, finally reaching the actual measurement results and conclusions. Since the UWB is a pulse radio technique defined in time rather than in frequency domain, the great effort is put to study the actual design and performance of the amplifier in both frequency and time domain.

Access Level

info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess

Download

Share

COinS