The present application claims priority to Korean Patent Application No. 10-2009-0004993, filed on Jan. 21, 2009, and Korean Patent Application No. 10-2009-0112667, filed Nov. 20, 2009, the disclosures of which are expressly incorporated by reference in their entireties.
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates, in general, to ultra-wideband signal generators, and, more particularly, to technology related to a scheme for asynchronously regulating the equivalent half circuits of each of differential pulse oscillators and configuring the differential pulse oscillators in the form of an array for the purpose of generating multi-phase pulses and performing Phase Shift Keying (PSK) modulation when ultra-wideband signals are generated using the differential pulse oscillators and an array thereof.
2. Description of the Related Art
Ultra-wideband radio technology enables low-power operations due to a short pulse operation, and enables the implementation of a position tracking system requiring high-speed communication or high precision through the use of a wide bandwidth, and thus research into ultra-wideband radio technology has recently been actively conducted. When transmission or reception is performed using a pulse, several problems occur due to the interference between signals or the periodic repetition of a pulse unless the pulse is modulated. In order to effectively transmit data and extract target information in a radar system or a communication system, at least Quadrature Phase Shift Keying (QPSK) or M-ary phase shift keying (M-PSK) is required.
As shown in
Here, when the sine wave generator 101 has a differential structure, oscillation signals 101a and 101b have phases of (+) and (−). Accordingly, when signals are output using the switch 102 corresponding to a positive (+) signal, the signal at an output terminal 104 is a positive (+) pulse 104a. Further, when signals are output using the switch 103 corresponding to a negative (−) signal, the signal at the output terminal 104 is a negative (−) pulse 104b. Through this operation, BPSK modulation may be performed.
As shown in
The oscillation signals 201a, 201b, 201c and 201d of the quadrature sine wave generator 201 have phases of 0°, 90°, 180° and 270°, respectively. Therefore, when a signal is output using the switch 202 corresponding to a signal having a phase of 0°, the signal at an output terminal 206 is a pulse 208 having a phase of 0°. Further, when a signal is output using the switch 203 corresponding to a signal having a phase of 90°, the signal at the output terminal 206 is a pulse 209 having a phase of 90°. When a signal is output using the switch 204 corresponding to a signal having a phase of 180°, the signal at the output terminal 206 is a pulse 210 having a phase of 180°. When a signal is output using the switch 205 corresponding to a signal having a phase of 270°, the signal at the output terminal 206 is a pulse 211 having a phase of 270°. Therefore, when these pulses are used, QPSK modulation can be performed.
Such a conventional ultra-wideband pulse generator is problematic in that power efficiency is deteriorated due to the insertion loss of the switch units 102, 103, 202, 203, 204, and 205, and in that additional power loss may occur when the switch units are implemented in the form of active amplifiers so as to compensate for the insertion loss of the switch units.
Accordingly, the present invention has been made keeping in mind the above problems occurring in the prior art, and an aspect of the present invention may provide a multi-phase ultra-wideband signal generator, which asynchronously regulates the equivalent half circuits of each of differential pulse oscillators using asynchronous control signals when ultra-wideband signals are generated using the differential pulse oscillators and an array thereof, thus maximizing the transient response speed of the oscillators, and which interchanges the control sequence of the asynchronous control signals, thus performing PSK modulation without requiring a separate modulator.
The present invention may provide a multi-phase ultra-wideband signal generator using differential pulse oscillators and an array thereof, comprising N pulse oscillators for generating pulse signals based on supply of power; and further comprising N inverting amplification units for respectively outputting inverted amplified signals of output signals of the N pulse oscillators when a number of pulse oscillators is at least two, wherein, when the number of pulse oscillators is an even number, the pulse oscillators are arrayed such that they have a connection form in which output terminals OUT(+) and OUT(−) of a relevant pulse oscillator are respectively connected to output terminals OUT(+) and OUT(−) of a next pulse oscillator through a relevant inverting amplification unit, and the connection form is consecutively applied to the pulse oscillators ranging from a first pulse oscillator to a last pulse oscillator, and such that the output terminals OUT(+) and OUT(−) of the last pulse oscillator are respectively connected to output terminals OUT (−) and OUT(+) of the first pulse oscillator through a relevant inverting amplification unit, and wherein, when the number of pulse oscillators is an odd number greater than 1, the pulse oscillators are arrayed such that they have a connection form in which output terminals OUT(+) and OUT(−) of a relevant pulse oscillator are respectively connected to output terminals OUT(+) and OUT(−) of a next pulse oscillator through a relevant inverting amplification unit, and the connection form is consecutively applied to the pulse oscillators ranging from a first pulse oscillator to a last pulse oscillator, and such that the output terminals OUT(+) and OUT(−) of the last pulse oscillator are respectively connected to output terminals OUT(+) and OUT(−) of the first pulse oscillator through a relevant inverting amplification unit.
according to the present invention;
The above and other aspects, features and advantages of the present invention will be more clearly understood from the following detailed description taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings. In the following description of the present invention, if detailed descriptions of related well-known constructions or functions are determined to make the gist of the present invention unclear, the detailed descriptions will be omitted.
Hereinafter, embodiments of the present invention will be described in detail with reference to the attached drawings.
A multi-phase ultra-wideband signal generator (hereinafter referred to as an ‘ultra-wideband signal generator’) 300 using differential pulse oscillators and an array thereof according to the present invention will be described in detail with reference to
First, the differential pulse oscillator 400, which is the basic unit of the ultra-wideband signal generator 300 according to the present invention, will be described below.
As shown in
Here, the first switch unit 420 (including switches 421 and 422) is an active element switch or a passive element switch. The oscillator unit 410 is composed of equivalent half circuits (that is, a left core and a right core) around an actual or virtual AC ground 430 or 440. Power components to be supplied to the left core and the right core are respectively controlled by the two switches 421 and 422 of the first switch unit 410.
In this case, the oscillator unit 410 may include a second switch unit 413 (including switches 413a and 413b) connected between the resonators 411a and 411b and the negative conductance generators 412a and 412b so as to bypass the resonators 411a and 411b and configured to reduce a ringing component attributable to a switching operation or improve the response speed at the time of performing switching.
The flow of signal generation performed by the differential pulse oscillator 400 having the above construction will be described below.
First, when the first switches 421 and 422 are controlled so that the power to the oscillator unit 410 is supplied only for a predetermined period of time, pulse-shaped signals are generated.
In this case, the polarities of pulse signals output from output terminals OUT(+) and OUT(−) may be changed depending on control signals input to the control terminals Enable(+) and Enable(−) of the first switches 421 and 422. That is, depending on the control signals at the control terminals Enable(+) and Enable(−), it is possible that the phase of the output signal from the output terminal OUT(+) be 0° and the phase of the output signal from the output terminal OUT(−) be 180° and it is also possible that the phase of the output signal from the output terminal OUT(+) be 180° and the phase of the signal from the output terminal OUT(−) be 0°.
In the present invention, the signals of the pulse oscillator, which have a phase difference of 180° therebetween, are distinguished from each other as ‘+’ and ‘−’.
There are three states, that is, ‘off’, ‘oscillation ready’ and ‘oscillation’ depending on the control signals. The state ‘oscillation ready’ is divided into the state ‘left core oscillation ready’ and the state ‘right core oscillation ready’, which are shown in
First, as shown in
In this case, since current flows through neither the left core on the side of OUT(+) nor the right core on the side of OUT(−), and negative conductance for oscillation does not occur, and thus the oscillator unit cannot oscillate.
In the state ‘left core oscillation ready’ (τ1) of
Since the left and right cores of the differential oscillator are arranged around the (actual or virtual) AC ground on the basis of the principle of operation, both the left and right cores must have negative conductance (−G) so as to allow the differential oscillator to oscillate.
Therefore, with regard to the control signals of
In this case, the switches 413a and 413b of the second switch unit are turned on (30) and are configured to bypass the resonators 411a and 411b to the AC ground, and thus a ringing component that may be generated at the time of performing switching is eliminated.
Meanwhile, in the state ‘Right core oscillation ready’ (τ1) of
Considering that, in order for the differential oscillator to oscillate, both the left and right cores must have negative conductance (−G), the right core enters the state in which current flows therethrough, but the left core is still turned off by the switch 421. As a result, oscillating conditions cannot be satisfied, and thus the oscillator unit cannot oscillate. In this case, similarly to the state ‘left core oscillation ready’, the switches 413a and 413b of the second switch unit are turned on (60) and are configured to bypass the resonators 411a and 411b to the AC ground, and thus a ringing component that may be generated at the time of performing switching is eliminated.
The state ‘oscillation’ may be divided into the case where, as shown in
In the two cases, since oscillation occurs as initial oscillation conditions are interchanged between the left core and the right core, the phases of the oscillation signals are also interchanged between the left and right cores. In this case, because the oscillation signals exhibit a phase difference of 180° therebetween due to the characteristics of the differential oscillator, the polarities of the oscillation signals are also opposite to each other.
Therefore, in
That is, the phase of the signal, output from the output terminal OUT(+) (or OUT(−)) when the control signals of
Further, the asynchronous control signals (of
The ultra-wideband signal generator 300 according to the present invention includes N pulse oscillators 400 for generating pulse signals based on the supply of power, and N inverting amplification units 500 for respectively outputting inverted amplified signals of the output signals of the N pulse oscillators 400.
Further, the differential pulse oscillators for QPSK modulation may be configured in the form of an array as in
In this case, when there is one pulse oscillator 400, the inverting amplification units 500 are not required. However, when the number of pulse oscillators 400 is at least two, N inverting amplification units 500 for respectively outputting inverted amplified signals of the output signals of N pulse oscillators are required so that the pulse oscillators 400 can be configured in the form of an array.
That is, as shown in
In this case, control signals are required for the first pulse oscillator 400a and the second pulse oscillator 400b, respectively.
Meanwhile, it is assumed that an input signal for performing control so that oscillation starts after the left core is turned on first, as shown in
That is, if it is assumed that the first pulse oscillator 400a inputs signals (the signals of
In the case of signals generated by (0, 0), (0, 1), (1, 0) or (1, 1), initial oscillation conditions can be interchanged, so that the phases of oscillation signals can also change, and the arrays of the oscillation signals have a quadrature phase therebetween, and thus QPSK modulation can be performed. The relationships between the phases of output signals corresponding to respective input signals are shown in
When M-ary PSK (M-PSK) higher than QPSK is required, the ultra-wideband signal generator can be implemented in the form of an array of a larger number of differential pulse oscillators, as shown in
That is, when the number of pulse oscillators is an even number, the pulse oscillators are arrayed such that they have a connection form in which the output terminals OUT(+) and OUT(−) of a relevant pulse oscillator are respectively connected to the output terminals OUT(+) and OUT(−) of the next pulse oscillator through a relevant inverting amplification unit, and the connection form is consecutively applied to the pulse oscillators ranging from the first pulse oscillator to the last pulse oscillator, and such that the output terminals OUT(+) and OUT(−) of the last pulse oscillator are respectively connected to the output terminals OUT(−) and OUT(+) of the first pulse oscillator through a relevant inverting amplification unit.
Further, when the number of pulse oscillators is an odd number greater than 1, the pulse oscillators are arrayed such that they have a connection form in which the output terminals OUT(+) and OUT(−) of a relevant pulse oscillator are respectively connected to the output terminals OUT(+) and OUT(−) of the next pulse oscillator through a relevant inverting amplification unit, and the connection form is consecutively applied to the pulse oscillators ranging from the first pulse oscillator to the last pulse oscillator, and such that the output terminals OUT(+) and OUT(−) of the last pulse oscillator are respectively connected to the output terminals OUT(+) and OUT(−) of the first pulse oscillator through a relevant inverting amplification unit. Meanwhile, it can be seen that the structure of
Hereinafter, embodiments of the present invention will be described in detail with reference to the attached drawings.
The elements M3 and M4 are configured such that their drains and gates are cross coupled to provide negative conductance (−G). Further, the elements M3 and M4 compensate for the loss of the LC resonators 610a and 610b, and thus constitute an LC differential oscillator.
In this case, the differential pulse oscillator has a structure in which power components to be supplied to M3 and M4 are controlled by using M1 and M2, and M5, and M6 are used to reduce a ringing component attributable to a switching operation or to improve a response speed at the time of performing switching.
As described above, when an ultra-wideband signal generator according to the present invention is used, PSK modulation may be performed without requiring a separate modulator, and fast transient response characteristics may be W obtained. Therefore, the present invention is advantageous in that it may reduce complexity in the implementation of circuits and costs for implementation, and may enable a radio system having operating characteristics of low power, high speed and high precision to be implemented.
Although the embodiments of the present invention have been disclosed for illustrative purposes, those skilled in the art will appreciate that various modifications, additions and substitutions are possible, without departing from the scope and spirit of the invention as disclosed in the accompanying claims. Therefore, it should be noted that all suitable modifications, changes and equivalents thereof belong to the scope of the present invention.
Number | Date | Country | Kind |
---|---|---|---|
10-2009-0004993 | Jan 2009 | KR | national |
10-2009-0112667 | Nov 2009 | KR | national |