Topics

• TARGET offers Educational Services at the EuMW Exhibition
• Hidden Highlights


• WP 2.1.2.x Quickshot Modelling has ended
• WP 2.2.D.1 Classic D – Power Amplifier Design Overview has ended
• WP 2.2.A.2 (Technology Roadmap) has started

TOPICS

TARGET offers Educational Services at the EuMW Exhibition

TARGET’s 49 academic and industrial partners, active Europe-wide in the important fields of microwave power amplifier research and production, now offer educational services, based on their accumulated theoretical and practical expertise:

• RF Semiconductor Materials and Devices
• RF Device Characterisation
• RF Device Modelling
• Microwave Power Amplifier Design
• Microwave Power Amplifier Linearisation Techniques
• Device-Level Linearization Techniques
• Modelling for TX System Level Analysis

These particular courses offered by an international consortium of industry and universities are tailored according to the special needs of our customers.

To learn more about this high profile project come and visit us at:
EuMW 2005
Oct. 4-6
Booth 1218, CNIT, La Défense, Paris

Sue Raab

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Hidden Highlights

In this and in the following issues of our newsletter you’ll find a series of highlights achieved within our joint research programme. Additionally, we made considerable progress in less glamorous albeit important fields onto which I’d like to shed some light.

First of all let me mention the excellent standing of TARGET in the scientific community. Within our Liaison and Special Events activities we managed to play a vital role in the European Microwave Week and in the IEEE MTT-S International Microwave Symposium. As far as we can see now the same is going to happen in the Asia Pacific Microwave Conference. We can say that TARGET has become a global player in less than two years!

Our summer and winter school programme turns out to be a success story, too. The interest in these events is sharply increasing: At the end of August we could welcome 50 attendees in Istanbul, 9 of them coming from outside TARGET. As a similar indicator of increasing interest from the outside world we can take the fact that we started with 11 associated members and now we count 18, most of them being industry companies.

Finally let me mention that over the summer we managed to design a series of seven modular TARGET courses that will be offered to the public for the first time at the European Microwave Week Exhibition in Paris! Don’t miss to visit our booth # 1218!

TARGET has pressed the fast forward button and it develops very well. I am looking forward to presenting you “Hidden Highlights” next time again!

Gottfried Magerl

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WP 2.1.2.x Quickshot Modelling has ended

The validation of microwave non-linear models is not standardised. Due to limited page size in publications, researchers only present a snapshot of experimental model verifications, which makes it difficult for an outsider to assess the overall model quality, and the model’s applicability to other technologies and applications. The objective of the trilogy of WP 2.1.2.x Quickshot Modelling work packages was to develop a framework to systematically express model accuracies.

The first work package, WP 2.1.2.1, could be considered as the ‘brainstorming core’. Based on the (very limited) available literature and own experiences, an overview was made of possible metric expressions. Due to the large variety of possible parameters that can be checked, it was decided to make distinction between a ‘basic’ set and an ‘extended’ set of model verifications. The ‘basic’ set consists of a series of tests that are of importance for any microwave non-linear model, and that requires measurement equipment that is present in most labs. ‘Extended’ tests are device/circuit dependent and may also require special measurement hardware, e.g., harmonic loadpull.

Next, three partners (UniFE, UVigo, K.U. Leuven) applied the initial set of ‘basic’ metrics to three test cases, which resulted in a revised set of metric expressions. One important conclusion of this initial study was to target for dimensionless metric quantities, and also to avoid numerical conditioning problems, like dividing by small numbers.

Subsequently, this list of ‘basic’ metric expressions was communicated to the WP 2.1.2.2 and WP 2.1.2.3 partners, and an ADS template was created to facilitate the calculations. In addition, metric expressions matching the ‘extended’ set of model verifications were also defined at this point.

In the meantime, the WP 2.1.2.2 partners were subdivided into five clusters, each focussing on a particular device technology: low-power pHEMTs, medium-power pHEMTs, SiGe HBTs, GaN HEMTs, and LDMOS devices. By developing several models for the same physical device, models can not only be intercompared in an objective way, but, which was the real objective of this WP, the use of the metrics can be tested in-depth. Such activity is clearly not possible without close interactions at cluster level, i.e., coordination of exchange of samples, planning of measurements, etc.

Similarly, the WP 2.1.2.3 partners were subdivided into three clusters, each focussing on a particular PA implementation: MMIC, MIC, and packaged amplifiers. Also here, close interactions were necessary to ensure coherent results.

As final outcome, metric results of in total 21 models are presented in the final deliverable. For the technical details and conclusions, we refer to the deliverable.

Finally, let us express the wish that the end of Quickshot Modelling becomes the start of an attitude by which researchers adopt a more systematic approach to validate their microwave non-linear models.

Dominique Schreurs

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WP 2.2.D.1 Classic D – Power Amplifier Design Overview has ended

The WP2.2.D.1 finished last June. Its aim was to overview and coordinate the research activities in the field of Power Amplifier (PA) design, addressing and integrating research efforts in this area, and to share the knowledge through TARGET members. Remarkable results in the field of Research Coordination and Research Spreading have been achieved by the 18 Units involved in this WP. For instance, several states of the art PAs have been designed during WP life.

A SiGe BiCMOS amplifier for 5GHz WLAN application was designed and realised (see Fig. 1).

Several GaAs PHEMT Class F PAs for X Band T/R modules have been developed, exploiting European technology and achieving remarkable results in terms of efficiency and power (see Fig. 2).

Innovative technologies for PAs were investigated and in particular an hybrid C-Band GaN HEMT second harmonic tuned PA has been realised and tested, exploiting a European process (Selex-SI) resulting in very promising and amazing results as shown in Fig. 3.

For more information on design results, please refer to the Deliverable DLV1.3.2.6

Moreover, 4 National Projects were started gathering several Partners around specific problems related to PA design.
A huge effort has been devoted to dissemination activities, resulting in the organisation of several spreading actions:

• 1 Internet course on Microwave PA Design (MiTraPas)
• 1 Tutorial on “Microwave Transistor Power Amplifiers” in the MIKON’04 conference (Warsaw, 16 May, 2004)
• 1 Tutorial on “Amplifier Design” (joined with the Tutorial on “Linearisation”, Rome 17 November 2004)
• Several contributions to the TARGET Tutorial on “Device characterisation” (Amsterdam 15 October 2004) and the 1st TARGET Summer School held in Crete, Greece (September 2004)
• Organisation of a Special Issue of IJRFMiCAE
• Organisation of the 1st TARGET Workshop on “RF Power Amplifiers”, held in Orvieto (Italy) 14-15 April 2005
• Organisation of a Target Special Event, held in "Centro Studi Giorgio Barzilai" Rome (Italy) on 17 March 2005

The obtained research results have been collected in open publications, of which 19 papers already published, 10 accepted for publication and 5 under review.
Finally, a foundry interface, namely DeLFI, for multi-project activities has been established. For further information please visit the web site www.target-delfi.org.

Paolo Colantonio

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WP 2.2.A.2 (Technology Roadmap) has started

The aim of the WP 2.2.A.2 is to proceed the successful cooperation of the TARGET partners to find the potentials and limitations of RF devices based on current and future semiconductor technologies and to extend these activities to prepare a technology roadmap for RF devices. The expected results of the work will be published as tutorials and papers. This WP starts in July 2005 with a period of 18 months.

The following tasks are part of the activities:

• The actual and the expected applications for RF devices will be listed, sorted by relevant aspects and discussed in connection with the possible technologies.
• The ultimate physical limits of the different technologies and materials groups shall be find.
• CMOS can be also rated as a technology for RF devices. Accepting the fact, that CMOS is and will be in the next future the most important semiconductor technology, the task is to indicate the most probable solutions to overcome the expected physical and technical limits of CMOS with the aim to give hints for the next important research areas.
• The prepared papers and tutorials will be presented at special TARGET events like „TARGET Tutorials“, „TARGET Schools“ and also outside TARGET.
• Furthermore, selected results will be presented as tutorials at the second TARGET Winter School "Semiconductor materials and devices", February 19th – 25th, 2006 in Jena, Germany.
  

Wolfgang Richter

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Imprint

published by: ftw. Forschungszentrum Telekommunikation Wien Betriebs-GmbH, Donau-City-Straße 1, 1220 Vienna, Austria, Phone +43/1/5052830-0

responsible for content: Prof. Dr. Gottfried Magerl, Mag. Sue Raab