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IEEE MICROWAVE AND WIRELESS COMPONENTS LETTERS, VOL. 17, NO. 6, JUNE 2007

An MMIC Pulse Generator Using Dual Nonlinear Transmission Lines

Mark Kintis, Xing Lan, Flavia Fong, Donald Sawdai, Kwok Loi, Keith Kono, and Augusto Gutierrez
AbstractWe present a novel nonlinear transmission line (NLTL) pulse generator using dual-NLTL, true-time-delay, waveform-alignment technique, realized in Gallium Arsenide (GaAs) monolithic microwave integrated circuit (MMIC) technology. The diodes in these two NLTLs have opposite polarities in layout. Therefore, they are responsible for sharpening the two signals rising and falling edges separately. A simple, low-cost, wideband combiner is adopted to combine the two ne aligned waveforms without introducing much distortion to the wideband signal. As a result, a sharp pulse is obtained with both edges compressed. With a sinusoidal signal as the input to the fabricated MMIC, a fall time of around 12 ps and rise time of 14 ps were measured at the output. This MMIC is a candidate for pulse or comb generators in many commercial and military applications. Index TermsComb generator, monolithic microwave integrated circuit (MMIC), nonlinear transmission line (NLTL), pulse generation, pulse shaping circuits.

I. INTRODUCTION

NONLINEAR transmission line (NLTL) is a ladder network consisting of a high impedance transmission line periodically loaded with reverse-biased Schottky varactor diodes (SVD). NLTLs have broad applications in high speed sampling oscilloscopes, time domain reectometry (TDR), comb generators, and frequency synthesizers [1][12]. Many of these applications involve techniques for forming and sharpening an electrical pulse. Conventional NLTL circuits can only sharpen one edge of the input signal at the expense of expanding the other. To compress the signal, many other techniques can be employed. For example, soliton propagation can be utilized for this purpose to provide a large compression ratio. However, special design strategies of tapered inhomogeneous NLTL [3], [4] or additional quenching network [5] need to be carefully exercised to generate a clean single pulse, since an input voltage to the NLTL may break into a nite train of solitary waves with oscillatory tail [6]. The number of solitons excited strongly depends on the amplitude and width of the initial disturbance [3]. These secondary solitons and oscillatory tails are undesirable for most applications such as radar sensor and imaging, since they degrade circuit performances by masking the echo or smearing the image

contrast [6]. Adding a differentiator to convert the step function output of the NLTL into a pulse is also a way of forming an impulse [1], [7], [8]. Another technique [9] involves integration of high-nonlinearity, delta-doped diodes with high-speed, uniform-doped diodes for NLTL design. Using this method, a state-of-the-art result of 480-fs transient was reported with a precompressed signal as input. However, it requires additional processing steps to integrate two diode proles in a circuit. A pioneering study [10] by Linton et al. explored the possibility of generating square waveforms using signal compression on both rising and falling edges. It encountered a difcult problem of designing and implementing a high-speed switch for combining the output waveforms from the two NLTLs. The simulated waveform also showed undesired distortion introduced by the switch. Nevertheless, the interesting idea of twin NLTLs can be implemented differently for sharp impulse generation by introducing a true-time-delay waveform-alignment concept, which forms the basis of this work. In this letter, the design of a dual-NLTL MMIC pulse generator using true-time-delay waveform alignment is presented. An input signal is split into two by an off-chip Wilkinson divider, with one of the output signals delayed by a true time delay line before being fed into the two NLTLs. These two NLTLs are similar to each other except with opposite diode polarities in layout. After going through the same amount of sections, one of these two pulses is sharpened at the rising edge, while the other one at the falling edge. At the output these two pulses are added together. The pulses are nearly cancelled out, except at the edges, due to the small time offset. As a result, a resultant pulse with much narrower pulse width is generated. This dual NLTL is simple in structure and implementation, and does not require special processing or other complicated design techniques. In addition, both the pulse polarity and pulse width can be electronically controlled by selecting a proper delay between the two NLTL waveforms. II. DESIGN OF THE DUAL NLTL PULSE GENERATOR The SVD proles in this study were designed using a drift-diffusion simulator. The baseline prole uses a uniform modulation n-type GaAs Schottky barrier layer, a uniform subcathode contact layer. The SVD proles layer, and an were grown by solid-source molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) on 4-in semi-insulating GaAs substrates. The GaAs SVD front side process is very similar to NGSTs ight-qualied 1- m GaAs HBT process. Highlights of this process include wet-etched mesas, sintered cathode contacts, silicon nitride passivation, NiCr thin-lm resistors, MIM capacitors, and two 100layers of gold interconnect metal with air-bridge crossovers.

Manuscript received January 17, 2007; revised February 5, 2007. This work was supported by the Internal Research and Development Funding from Space Technology, Northrop Grumman Corporation. The authors are with Space Technology, Northrop Grumman Corporation, Redondo Beach, CA 90278 USA (e-mail: xing.lan@ngc.com). Color versions of one or more of the gures in this letter are available online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org. Digital Object Identier 10.1109/LMWC.2007.897799

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Fig. 1. Block diagram for pulse generation with dual NLTLs.

Single-ground-plane coplanar waveguide (SGPCPW) was selected as the transmission line type of our NLTL design for the reasons of simpler structure, smaller chip size and lower conductor loss. The SGPCPW line is periodically loaded by reverse-biased GaAs SVD diodes. Due to the nonlinearity of the diode characteristic, harmonics are generated as the input signal propagates along the NLTL line. After a certain number of NLTL sections, a shock wave with sharp edge is generated. The coupled system of ordinary differential equations based on Kirchoff s law outlined in [11] are used in studying the nonlinear behaviors of the NLTL. However, a simple and intuitive way often used is to check the phase velocity dependence on the diode capacitance, which is, in turn, voltage dependent, as shown in (1) where is the unit section length. and are the line section inductance and capacitance, respectively. is the capacitance of varactor diode capacitance for the corresponding voltage . The mechanism of pulse sharpening effect is also known as catch-up theory [6]. A rough but simple estimation for the edge compression time is given in (2) as (2) and are where is the number of NLTL sections. the minimum and maximum voltages of the propagating signal separately. The disadvantage of a single NLTL approach is that it only sharpens one edge at the expense of spreading out the other edge. The polarity of the diodes in the layout determines which edge is sharpened. To overcome this disadvantage, two similar NLTLs with opposite polarity of diodes can be used to sharpen both edges of the generated pulse (see Fig. 1). An input signal is split into two by an off-chip Wilkinson divider, with one of the output signals delayed by a true time delay line before being fed into the dual NLTL MMIC pulse generator for sharpening the falling/rising edges separately. The two waveforms nearly cancel out at the output due to the small misalignment of the two pulses except at the edges. As a result, a pulse with much narrower width is generated. The concept is demonstrated in Fig. 2 using an example simulated in Agilent ADS. The dual NLTL approach is simple and offers several other advantages. For example, the polarity and pulse width of the generated pulse can be controlled by selecting a proper delay between the two NLTL waveforms. In Fig. 2, if the signal in
Fig. 2. Transient simulation of a dual NLTL pulse sharper waveforms (a) individual NLTL waveforms and (b) resultant NLTL waveform at output.

Fig. 3. Fabricated chip photo (chip size: 3.7 mm

2 4.5 mm).

arm2 lags the signal in arm1 slightly, a negative pulse will be generated instead of a positive pulse. III. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS A dual NLTL SGPCPW type pulse generator was fabricated and measured (see Fig. 3). It was designed based on the technology described in Section II. Each NLTL is loaded by 161 SVDs with a diameter of 15 m. A simple resistive T-shape wideband combiner is used at the

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IEEE MICROWAVE AND WIRELESS COMPONENTS LETTERS, VOL. 17, NO. 6, JUNE 2007

IV. CONCLUSION An MMIC sharp pulse generator combining two conventional NLTLs with a true-time-delay waveform-alignment technique was rst demonstrated. This generator is simple to design and also is suitable for comb generator applications, where both even and odd high harmonic tones are needed over a selected frequency band with excellent output power spectrum atness. The approach can also be extended to other time domain waveform synthesis applications. This MMIC serves as a good candidate for pulse or comb generation in many commercial and military applications. ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Fig. 4. Measured chip output waveform (not corrected for measurement system loss).

The authors would like to thank D. Fisher for proofreading the early drafts of this letter. REFERENCES
[1] M. J. W. Rodwell, S. T. Allen, R. Y. Yu, M. G. Case, U. Bhattacharya, M. Reddy, E. Carman, M. Kamegawa, Y. Konishi, J. Pusl, and R. Pullela, Active and nonlinear wave propagation devices in ultrafast electronics and optoelectronics, Proc. IEEE, vol. 82, no. 7, pp. 10371059, Jul. 1994. [2] C. J. Madden, M. J. W. Rodwell, R. A. Marsland, D. M. Bloom, and Y. C. Pao, Generation of 3.5 ps fall-time shock waves on a monolithic nonlinear transmission line, IEEE Electron Device Lett., vol. EDL-9, no. 6, pp. 303305, Jun. 1988. [3] M. Tan, C. Y. Su, and W. J. Anklam, 7 electrical pulse compression on an inhomogeneous nonlinear transmission line, Electron. Lett., vol. 24, no. 4, pp. 213214, 1988. [4] M. Case, M. Kamegawa, R. Yu, M. J. W. Rodwell, and J. Franklin, Impulse compression using soliton effects in a monolithic GaAs circuit, Appl. Phys. Lett., vol. 58, no. 2, pp. 173175, Jan. 14, 1991. [5] T. E. McEwan and G. E. Dallum, Soliton Quenching NLTL Impulse Circuit With a Pulse Forming Network at the Output, U.S. Patent 5 804 921, Sep. 8, 1998. [6] R. Hirota and K. Suzuki, Theoretical and experimental studies of lattice solitons in nonlinear lumped networks, Proc. IEEE, vol. 61, no. 10, pp. 14831491, Oct. 1973. [7] R. A. Marsland, V. Valdivia, C. J. Madden, M. J. W. Rodwell, and D. M. Bloom, 130 GHz GaAs monolithic integrated circuit sampling head, Appl. Phys. Lett., vol. 55, no. 6, pp. 592594, Aug. 7, 1989. [8] O. Wohlgemuth, M. J. W. Rodwell, R. Reuter, J. Braunstein, and M. Schlechtweg, Active probes for network analysis within 70230 GHz, IEEE Trans. Microw. Theory Tech., vol. 47, no. 12, pp. 25912597, Dec. 1999. [9] D. W. van der Weide, Delta-doped Schottky diode nonlinear transmission lines for 480-fs, 3.5-V transients, Appl. Phys. Lett., vol. 65, no. 7, pp. 881883, Aug. 15, 1994. [10] M. Falah and D. Linton, High data rate pulse regeneration using nonlinear transmission line technology (NLTL), in Proc. 6th IEEE High Freq. Postgrad. Stud. Colloq., Sep. 2001, pp. 136141. [11] S. Ibuka, K. Abe, T. Miyazawa, A. Ishii, and S. Ishii, Fast high-voltage pulse generator with nonlinear transmission line for high repetition rate operation, IEEE Trans. Plasma Sci., vol. 25, no. 2, pp. 266271, Apr. 1997. [12] Picosecond Pulse Labs, A new breed of comb generators featuring low phase noise and low input power, Microw. J., vol. 49, no. 5, pp. 278280, May 2006.

TABLE I MEASURED OUTPUT POWER OF HIGHER ORDER HARMONICS FOR COMB GENERATOR APPLICATION

output to combine waveforms from the two NLTLs. A 1-GHz sinusoidal input signal with 20-dBm power is split by an offchip Wilkinson power divider before being fed into the chip. The resultant pulse at chip output was measured by a Tektronix TDS8000 high-speed digital sampling oscilloscope (see Fig. 4). The measured waveform shows a fall time of 12 ps and a rise time of 14 ps. These include the contributions from the sampler, cables, and the measurement system, which need to be RSS de-convolved. Estimated fall/ rise time at the chip output is in is estimated to be around 3 V the 79 ps range. Output after correcting the measurement system loss. The measured spectrum shows satisfactory output power atness of 2 dB around the intended 20-GHz frequency range, with both even and odd harmonic tones present (see Table I). By optimizing the diode characteristics, the two NLTL design, and the wideband combiner, sharper edges can be generated. Therefore, further improvement in performance can be expected. Other edge-sharpening techniques can be readily incorporated in this higher level approach to generate a sharper impulse as well. As a comb generator, NLTLs may offer better performances than step recovery diodes (SRD) [12], in terms of operation frequency range, efciency, output power spectrum atness and stability of the circuit. In addition, they can offer better phase noise performance than SRD comb generators, due to the absence of shot noise and recombination noise.