Welcome to the Analog Lab MQP Archive!

• Biomedical IC Evaluation

  Hattie Spetla, Matt Zimmerman

  This project builds on the results of the previous “Biomedical Sigma-Delta IC Design" project from 2005. The target applications are involved in monitoring the electrical activity of the human body required in various clinical and scientific disciplines (e.g., ECG, EEG, EMG, etc.). At present, distinct instrumentation is designed for each electrophysiologic signal, and for different applications related to each signal; usually, systems are composed of numerous discrete components. The resulting systems are subject to severe cost, size, complexity, and power consumption penalties.

  To overcome these limitations, a prototype IC was designed in a 1.6µm CMOS process. The IC incorporates circuitry for a sigma-delta ADC, a building-block function common to acquisition of all major electrophysiologic data. In this project, a system was designed around the prototype IC to investigate its functionality and demonstrate acquisition and processing of biomedical signals.

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• Biomedical Sigma-Delta IC Design

  Steve Masullo, Walter Wong

  The purpose of this project was to begin the development and evaluation of a single channel electrophysiologic data acquisition system. The goal was to fabricate a breadboard version of the system, develop an integrated circuit layout of the system, and develop a digital interface to a PC. The analog bread board was a single ended, second order sigma-delta analog to digital converter and was digitally interfaced to the PC using a National Instruments Digital I/O board. A portion of the system, a switched-capacitor integrator which used a fully differential folded cascode op-amp, was designed using the NCSU 1.6 um process library in Cadence Virtuoso for the integrated circuit.

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• Wireless QPSK Data Transmission System

  Pavlo Fedorenko, Christopher J. Huber, John G. Kauffman

  This project investigated a wireless transceiver design based upon Analog Devices products. The report presents mathematical models of various data transmission schemes, examining their bandwidth efficiency, phase walk, and noise tolerance. Various hardware interfacing solutions are described. Characterization measurements evaluating the system performance confirmed the mathematical modeling results.
  

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• Class-D Audio Amplifier

  Alex DiDonato, Ryan Dupuis, Tyler W. Folsom

  This MQP involved the design, construction, and testing of an efficient high-powered, class-D
  audio amplifier. The main goal was to achieve 95% efficiency using the 42 Volt PowerNet standard for automotive applications.  The signal processing stage was completed using a three-level Sigma-Delta modulation scheme which
  drove a MOSFET H-bridge configuration. Testing confirmed that the goal of 95% efficiency was
  met, and an RMS power of 400 Watts was produced.
  

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• Solar Panel Peak Power Tracker

  Eric Anderson, Chris Dohan, Aaron Sikora

  This MQP involved the design, fabrication, and test of a Maximum Peak Power Tracking (MPPT) controller for a solar photovoltaic battery charging system.  A boost-converter topology was used to tailor the V-I characterstic of the load as a function of boost converter duty cycle. Solar panel voltage and current are continuously monitored by a closed-loop microprocessor based control system, and the duty cycle of the boost converter is continuously adjusted to extract maximum power. System testing confirms peak power tracking under changing insolation conditions. Under specific conditions, efficiencies in excess of 90% are shown to be possible.
  

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• Bandgap Voltage Reference in 1.5um CMOS

  Ryan Foreman, Andrew Solitro, Christopher Wolfertz

  This MQP involved the design, fabrication, and evaluation of a trimmable bandgap voltage reference in a 1.5um "digital" CMOS integrated circuit process.
  

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• ADSL Applications

  Ruben Brito, Maxim Liberman, Drew Merrill

  This MQP investigated circuit design alternatives for active termination of transmission lines to reduce power consumption and preserve signal integrity in Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) applications.
  

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• Precision Current Measurement

  Andrew Houde, Aaron Lopez, Michael Spencer

  Current measurement techniques include resistive sensing, current transformers, and magnetoresistive sensing. The measurement of current using Hall-effect sensors has the advantage of being noninvasive, but suffers from low precision over a large temperature range. Through laboratory experimentation and research, this project details the characterization of a Hall-effect sensor and design of a system that provides current measurement results over a range of -6A to 6A that are accurate within 1% over a temperature range of -25 degrees C to +85 degrees C.
  

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• Power Line Proximity Alarm

  Nicholas Arcolano, Melissa Diercks, Jessica Hopkins, Jeremy Lynch

  This project investigated the design of a safety system to alert the operator of industrial and construction equipment (for example, a crane) of a potential electrocution hazard. The system comprises a remote electric-field sensor and a base unit, connected by a wireless RF link.
  

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• 50A Programmable Power Supply

  Brian Heller, Alison MacFarland, Dan O'Brien

  This project involves the construction of a power supply which will generate a programmable 1.10-1.85V output, capable of supplying currents up to 50A in less than 1µ second. Specifications call for an output voltage with less than ±80mV of ripple and an overall efficiency of 80%.

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• Design and Testing of a 0.25 µm 12-Bit Digital to Analog Converter

  Justin Bourgette, Dan Cavallari, Bing Luo

  The ATMEL Corporation design center in Columbia, Maryland sponsored this project to design a 12-bit digital-to-analog converter (DAC) for use in a successive approximation analog to digital converter. The project encompassed the integrated circuit design flow, from schematic design up until wafer fabrication. The final ADC was required to have a 10-bit resolution over the input voltage range of 0 to 2.0 Volts. This IC was realized using the AMKOR fabrication facility in a 0.25 micron CMOS process.