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Negli ultimi 30 anni, l’elettronica per le Telecomunicazioni Wireless si è dimostrata una delle forze trainanti nello sviluppo delle nuove tecnologie Complementary Metal-OxideSemiconductor (CMOS). Questa piccola branca del vasto mondo dell’elettronica è infatti in grado di smuovere, in tutto il mondo, miliardi di dollari, molti dei quali inevitabilmente finiscono per finanziare gli avanzati progetti di ricerca in grado di rispondere alle domande del Mercato. In tutto il mondo, le persone chiedono nuovi dispositivi portatili, più performanti, più veloci, più affidabili, che consumino poca potenza e che abbiano una maggiore capacità di immagazzinare dati. Per rispondere a queste richieste, fisici e ingegneri hanno sviluppato nuovi e incredibili nodi tecnologici ultra-scalati, che soddisfano i requisiti di velocità e bassi consumi, garantendo un’impressionante densità circuitale. Al giorno d’oggi, le fonderie come TSMC e Samsung sono in grado di realizzare transistor estremamente piccoli, con lunghezze di canale di soli 7 nm e frequenze di transizione nell’ordine delle centinaia di GHz. Questo sviluppo si rivela estremamente favorevole per lo sviluppo di dispositivi digitali ad alte prestazioni, che raggiungono performance di velocità e di memoria prima inimmaginabili. Non di meno, anche i blocchi analogici devono essere integrati in questi nodi estremamente scalati, in modo da potersi adattare ai circuiti integrati (IC) digitali. Primo obiettivo di questo lavoro di tesi è, quindi, lo sviluppo di IC analogici in nodi tecnologici deep-submicron, come il 28 nm bulk-CMOS e il 16 nm FinFET (Fin Field Effect Transistor). Questo obiettivo è stato raggiunto affrontando diverse difficoltà date dalle scarse performance analogiche di queste tecnologie avanzate, tra cui un basso guadagno intrinseco e una limitata tensione di alimentazione. Il secondo obiettivo di questo lavoro è stato sviluppare questi stessi IC in modo che fossero compatibili con i più moderni stan, In the last 30 years, Mobile Telecommunication (TLC) electronics proved to be one of the major driving motors in the development of new Complementary Metal-OxideSemiconductor (CMOS) technologies. This limited branch of the electronics world managed to move billions of dollars worldwide, some of which unavoidably ended up in financing advanced research projects to answer market demands. People all around the world ask for extremely performing portable devices, faster, more reliable, low power consuming and with impressive memory capability. To answer all these requests, physics and engineers developed new and incredibly down-scaled technology nodes, which met the high speed and low power consumption requirement, granting an impressive circuital density. Nowadays foundries such as TSMC or Samsung are able to manufacture incredibly small transistor devices, with channel length in the order of only 7 nm and transition frequency in the order of several hundreds of GHz. This situation has become extremely favorable for the development of high-performance digital devices, which are able to reach speed and memory capability previously unbelievable. Nonetheless, also analog building blocks must be integrated in deeply down-scaled node, in order to adapt with digital ICs. First task of this thesis work is to develop analog ICs in deep sub-micron technology nodes, such as 28 nm bulk-CMOS and 16 nm FinFET (Fin Field Effect Transistor). This has been accomplished facing several difficulties given by the very poor analog behavior of such advanced technologies, especially in terms of low transistor intrinsic gain and limited signal headroom, caused by the low supply voltage. The second task of this work is to develop these same analog ICs in order that they meet requirements of the most advanced TLC standards, such as LTE and 5G. The increased number of portable devices worldwide made in fact unavoidable the introduction of new communication standards, in order to face the huge nu

This paper presents a transistor-level design with extensive experimental validation of a Content Addressable Memory (CAM), based on an eXclusive OR (XOR) single-bit cell. This design exploits a dedicated architecture and a fully custom approach (both in the schematic and the layout phase), in order to achieve very low-power and high-speed performances. The proposed architecture does not require an internal clock or pre-charge phase, which usually increase the power request and slow down data searches. On the other hand, the dedicated solutions are exploited in order to minimize parasitic layout-induced capacitances in the single-bit cell, further reducing the power consumption. The prototype device, named CAM-28CB, is integrated in the deeply downscaled 28 nm Complementary Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor (CMOS) Bulk (28CB) technology. In this way, the high transistor transition frequency and the intrinsic lower parasitic capacitances allow the system speed to be improved. Furthermore, the high radiation hardness of this technology node (up to 1Grad TID), together with the CAM-28CB high-speed and low-power performances, makes this device suitable for High-Energy Physics experiments, such as ATLAS (A Toroidal LHC ApparatuS) at Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The prototype operates at a frequency of up to 100 MHz and consumes 46.86 µW. The total area occupancy is 1702 µm2 for 1.152 kb memory bit cells. The device operates with a single supply voltage of 1 V and achieves 0.41 fJ/bit/search Figure-of-Merit.

This paper presents a transistor-level design with extensive experimental validation of a Content Addressable Memory (CAM), based on an eXclusive OR (XOR) single-bit cell. This design exploits a dedicated architecture and a fully custom approach (both in the schematic and the layout phase), in order to achieve very low-power and high-speed performances. The proposed architecture does not require an internal clock or pre-charge phase, which usually increase the power request and slow down data searches. On the other hand, the dedicated solutions are exploited in order to minimize parasitic layout-induced capacitances in the single-bit cell, further reducing the power consumption. The prototype device, named CAM-28CB, is integrated in the deeply downscaled 28 nm Complementary Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor (CMOS) Bulk (28CB) technology. In this way, the high transistor transition frequency and the intrinsic lower parasitic capacitances allow the system speed to be improved. Furthermore, the high radiation hardness of this technology node (up to 1Grad TID), together with the CAM-28CB high-speed and low-power performances, makes this device suitable for High-Energy Physics experiments, such as ATLAS (A Toroidal LHC ApparatuS) at Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The prototype operates at a frequency of up to 100 MHz and consumes 46.86 µW. The total area occupancy is 1702 µm2 for 1.152 kb memory bit cells. The device operates with a single supply voltage of 1 V and achieves 0.41 fJ/bit/search Figure-of-Merit.

In this paper we describe a Content Addressable Memory architecture designed in 28 nm CMOS technology and based on the 65 nm XORAM cell previously developed. The cell is composed by two main blocks: a 6T SRAM, and a 4T XOR logic gate. Each XORAM cell makes a bitwise comparison between input data and stored data. The memory is organized in 18-bit words, and all the 18 XOR outputs bits must have a low logic value to trigger a high logic value of the single bit match line. A 18-input NOR gate performs this operation. The memory operation is triggered by the change of the least significant bit of the 18-bit input word, which is delayed w.r.t. The other bits. In this way, the logic does not require any clock. The proposed architecture is based on CMOS combinational logic, and it does not require any precharge operation, nor control and timing logic. The Associative Memory block is useful for several pattern recognition tasks, such as track recognition in high energy physics experiments, and image recognition for medical applications.