This Special Section of the IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits (JSSC) features expanded versions of papers selected from those presented at the 48th ESSCIRC Conference, held at Technische Universität Dresden, Dresden, Germany, during September 3-6, 2018.

Journal Paper - IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits, vol. 54, no. 7, pp 1827-1829, 2019 IEEE
DOI: 10.1109/JSSC.2019.2919403    ISSN: 0018-9200    » doi

Integrated millimeter-wave (mm-wave) circuits fabricated in current nanometric processes are especially sensitive to process variations. This issue produces shifts in the circuit performance that may significantly reduce the fabrication yield. In this line, per-die characterization and trimming are usually required for mm-wave integrated circuits, but this is an expensive and time-consuming task to be performed at the production line. Embedded calibration for mm-wave circuits is an appealing alternative to enhance yield that may overcome some of these issues. In this work we present a two-stage 60 GHz power amplifier (PA), designed in STMicroelectronics 55 nm CMOS technology, that features a one-shot calibration procedure for process variation compensation based on non-intrusive process monitors. We present the design of a tuning knob based on variable decoupling cells which have been implemented within the PA for calibration purposes. The proposed one-shot calibration procedure reads the output of the embedded process monitors and then relies on a machine learning regression model to find the best configuration of the tuning knobs for optimizing the performance of the circuit and enhance fabrication yield.

Conference - IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems ISCAS 2019

This paper presents a low-noise, low-power fully differential chopper-modulated front-end circuit intended for ECoG signal recording. Among other features, it uses a subthreshold source-follower biquad in the forward path to reduce noise and avoid the implementation of a ripple rejection loop. The prototype was designed in 0.18μm CMOS technology with a 1V supply. Post-layout simulations were carried out showing a power consumption below 2μW and an integrated input-referred noise of 0.75μVrms, with a noise floor below 50 nV/Hz, over a bandwidth from 1 to 200Hz, for a noise efficiency factor of 2.7.

Conference - IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems ISCAS 2019

This paper presents a brief review of techniques to overcome the problems associated with artifacts in analog front-ends for neural recording applications. These techniques are employed for handling Common-Mode (CM) Differential-Mode (DM) artifacts and include techniques such as Average Template Subtraction, Channel Blanking or Blind Adaptive Stimulation Artifact Rejection (ASAR), among others. Additionally, a new technique for DM artifacts compression is proposed. It allows to compress these artifacts to the requirements of the analog front-end and, afterwards, it allows to reconstruct the whole artifact or largely suppress it.

Conference - IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems ISCAS 2019

This paper presents a new current attenuator circuit to scale down the inference currents in memristor based crossbars that drive integrate-and-fire neurons, which subsequently allows to reduce the size of integrating capacitors by several orders of magnitude, making IC integration possible. The proposed circuit uses a linear switch to divide the inference current and scale it down by a factor of about 10⁴. The proposed attenuator has been designed in 130nm CMOS technology. Simulation results considering noise, process and temperature variations are shown to validate the presented approach.

Conference - IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems ISCAS 2019