Pulse generator and BPSK modulator design for CMOS UWB transmitters

This paper presents a tunable Gaussian Pulse Generator and a BPSK modulator topology for use in CMOS UWB transmitters. The Pulse Generator exploits the Voltage Transfer Characteristic of a modified CMOS inverter, while the BPSK modulator guarantees superior matching between positive and negative pulses and supports high data rates at low power consumption, since its functional operation is in the digital domain. The proposed circuits were applied in a 0.13 um CMOS UWB transmitter, and the post-layout simulation results, including bondwire effects, showed worst case sidelobes in the baseband signal at a level of -33 dBc and data rates up to 1 Gbps, at a power consumption of 30.1 mW.