Ultra-Wideband Pulse Generator with Cascode

Impulse Shaping Circuit

P.Pongsoon#\ K.Kaemarungsi*2, S.Siwamogsatham*3 and D.Bunnjaweht#4

#Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Thammasat University, Thailand
'prasityeee@gmail.com
*

'dahmmaet@engr.tu.ac.th

National Electronics and Computer Technology Center (NECTEC), Thailand

2kamol.kaemarungsi@nectec.or.th
3siwaruk.siwamogsatham@nectec.or.th

Abstract-U1tra-wideband (UWB) pulse generator circuit is said

to be the heart of any UWB systems. It is the fundamental circuit
for application and development of UWB technology. This paper
presents an UWB pulse generator with cascode transistors
operating as a pulse shaping circuit to generate Gaussian pulses.
In this work, the UWB pulse generator consists of three parts: an
edge triggered driver, an edge sharpener SRD, and a cascode for
impulse shaping. The proposed circuit allows the generator to
create short and high amplitude Gaussian-like pulses at low-cost.
Our measured UWB pulse was 1.0 ns pulse with 2.8 Vpeak.
I.

INTRODUCTION

Ultra-wideband (UWB) technology has recently received

more interest due to a number of advantageous properties such
as high multipath resolution and material penetration [ I].
Moreover, the signal is transmitted as a pulse train with low
duty cycle which offers low average transmission power in the
order of microwatts. These characteristics make UWB
systems attractive to military, medical, communications, and
ground penetrating radar (GPR) applications.
In 2002, the US Federal Communications Commission
(FCC) defined a UWB system as a system that radiates a
signal with a fractional bandwidth greater than 20% or signals
with an absolute bandwidth greater than 500 MHz [2]. The
FCC also imposed a set of rules of spectral masks for
maximum allowable transmission power for a number of
UWB applications. These spectral masks created challenges in
signal generation and transmission of UWB system in order to
avoid its potential interferences with existing communication
systems. Within those FCC's rules, there are a number of law
enforcement and security applications which allows UWB
systems to operate at frequencies below 960 MHz. The focus
of this work is aimed at a study of low cost and high
performance signal generator for UWB systems in this
frequency band.
Traditionally, a low-power UWB pulse generator is a
baseband circuit which utilizes a technique of storing energy
in a device and releasing an abrupt energy pulse at a precise
timing [3]. The key semiconductor components which are
often found in circuits for UWB pulse generators are step
recovery diodes (SRDs), avalanche transistors and MESFETs.
In the literature, SRD based pulse generators were presented
in [4] and [5]. A number of modifications were made to the

basic circuit to improve properties of UWB pulse such as in

[6]. This paper proposed an application of cascode circuit to a
conventional UWB pulse generator circuit and studied the
new response of pulse generator circuit.
Generally, UWB pulse shaping can be achieved using a
number of devices and techniques such as GaAs, MESFETs,
nonlinear transmission lines, short-circuit stubs and resistive
reactive circuits [5]. However these pulse shaping techniques
often have low output amplitude. Therefore, in this paper we
present a development of an impulse shaping circuit using
bipolar junction transistors in cascode configuration. The
proposed UWB pulse generator with cascode impulse shaping
circuit consists of three parts: an edge triggered driver, a SRD
edge sharpener, and a cascode for impulse shaping circuit.
Fig.1 illustrates a block diagram of the UWB pulse generator
where the cascode circuit is placed in the second part of the
diagram.
,-------:--,

4r

Fig. I Block diagram of the UWB Pulse Generator

II. CIRCUIT DESIGN AND DESCRIPTION

Fig. 2 shows a schematic of the UWB pulse generator used
in this work. It consists of three main parts: an edge triggered
driver, a SRD edge sharpener, and a cascode for impulse
shaping circuit. Note that shapes of signal at particular
measurement points are illustrated below the figure.
SRD
Edge Sharpener

Coscode for Impulse

Shaping Circuit

1':01 r;RlCR2' +

00'

Edge Triggered
Driver

L________.:

L ______

___________________ __________________

Fig. 2 Circuit of Ultra-Wideband pulse generator

A. Impulse Generator

The impulse generator is the SRD sharpener using a step

recovery diode (SRD). An important characteristic of this

978-1-4244-6908-6/10/$26.00 2010 IEEE

1128

III. EXPERIMENTAL SETUP

device is the transition time that determines the minimum
achievable pulse's transition [8]. Another key characteristic is
We fabricated a prototype of the proposed UWB pulse
minority carrier lifetime of the SRD, which affects the energy generator circuit using a FR4 glass epoxy substrate with
storage time of electric charge under reverse bias condition [8]. relative dielectric constant of 4.4 and thickness of 0.8 mm. Fig.
If a signal source is applied to the SRD pulse shaping circuit, 3 shows a photograph of the printed circuit board of the UWB
the rise time of the signal source should be less than minority pulse generator. Two main components used on the board
carrier lifetime of the SRD in order to obtain the maximum were a step recovery diode (SRD) and two wideband bipolar
achievable pulse amplitude [7].
junction transistors (BJTs). The SRD, MA44769 from MlA
When the SRD is forward-biased, the quantity of the COM Technology, was in SOT23 package [13]. This SRD
storage charge is controlled by DC bias and the charge is has pulse's transition time of 150 ps and minority carrier life
stored in the intrinsic layer of the SRD. This allows the SRD time of 20-50 ns. The two BJTs forming the cascode circuit
to continue to conduct current when the device is reverse were BFG520 manufactured by NXP Semiconductors and
biased. This reverse conduction continues until the charge is were also in SOT23 package. This BJT has a 9-GHz
swept out of the intrinsic layer. When the charges are depleted, bandwidth [14].
the diode abruptly stops conducting and shuts off and the fall
time of diode reverses which is also equal to the rise time of
the voltage on the load. Note that this duration is also called
the transition rise time. This time is a function of diode design,
circuit constraints, and diode operating conditions [8].
B.

Cascade Impulse Shaping Network

The design of cascode impulse shaping network is shown

in Fig.2. A cascode circuit is generally defined as a two-stage
amplifier consisting of a transistor in common-emitter (CE)
mode (transconductance amplifier) followed by a transistor in
common-base (CB) mode (current buffer) [12]. The key
advantage of the cascode configuration is that it is a wideband
circuit [12]. Moreover, the circuit can reduce the Miller effect
due to high input-output isolation [12]. The common-emitter
state is formed by Qi and common-base state is realized by Q2
as depicted in Fig. 2.
First, the transistor Qi is used for clipping. Therefore, if
the peak-to-peak value of the input waveform drives the
transistor into a saturation region, a portion of the output
waveform will be clipped as shown at point B in Fig. 2.
Typically, most transistor circuits are kept operating in the
active region so that the output signal will not be distorted.
However, in our case, the current rather than the voltage of the
waveform is of interest. When there is a large signal excursion
such as impulse waveform fed into the cascade circuit, the
transistor output current responds linearly to the input current.
However, the input-output voltage relationship is non-linear
[11].
Second, the transistor Q2 is used for clamping. In CB state
of this second transistor, we want to clamp the amplitude of
the positive input signal. The clamping effect of Q2 causes the
original signal to have only negative pulses as shown at point
o in Fig. 2. The usages of transistors for clipper and clamper
purposes were presented in [11].
In Fig. 2, the output pulse width and output amplitude are
controlled by resistor Ri. The resistor R2 and the capacitor C
are used as a high-pass filter for the transient response of the
cascode circuit. They also help reduce the ringing effect of the
signal. Analysis of mid-band frequency response of the
cascode impulse shaping network follows [12]. When using
the parameters Ri = 1 kn, C =100 pF, and R2 =100 n in this
paper the mid-band frequency is approximately 920 MHz.

Fig. 3 Photograph of UWB pulse generator

To study responses of the circuit according to various input

signals, we measured the output signals based on the input
signals with parameters given in Table I. To drive the input of
the circuit, we utilized an Agilent 33250A which is an 80MHz Function!Arbitrary waveform generator to feed a train of
pulse with different characteristics according to Table I. Note
that we used the pulse function to generate different input
signals with varied edge time and pulse width. At the output,
we used Tektronix TDS5104B which is a 1 GHzJ5
GSample/sec Digital Phosphor Oscilloscope to measure the
output Gaussian monocycle waveform.
TABLE I
INPUT PARAMETER SETUP

Amplitude
(Vp-p)

Edge time
(os)

10

10

30

15

50

20

70

25

100

Pulse Width
(os)

In this work, the input parameters that we are interested in

are input pulse repetition frequency, edge (rise/fall) time,
pulse width, and amplitude. The output parameters of interest
are the output edge (rise, fall) time, linearity, output pulse
width, and amplitude.
IV. MEASUREMENT RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
In this section, we describe our measurement results and
discuss the implication of our proposed circuit.
A.

Gaussian Pulse at Output

Fig.4 shows the result of a Gaussian pulse measured at the

output of our proposed UWB pulse generator. The generator

1129

produced 1.0-ns pulse duration and approximately 2.8 Vpeak

(3.56 Vpeak-to-peak). This UWB pulse had a center
frequency bandwidth of approximately 1.0 GHz which was
calculated by !c=lIT.
Tek

34745 Acqs

Stopped

less susceptible to the change of input pulse repetition

frequency. This is due to the linear characteristic of the
cascode circuit which is formed by the two BJTs in the
impulse shaping circuit part of our pulse generator.

20 Aut! 10 1029"12
--IMHz
-+-3MHz
S

--e--SMHz
--e-7MHz

FaU(Cl)1
709.1ps
II: 706.23921n
m: 766.4p
M: 1.034n
0": 39.33p
n: 34.74k

ft
Rise(Cl)!
1.094ns
_
....,
&....
+-fl_
_+t-<k-tJV
W
\ IJ\
, JI4'
,\' "M*;'H'1<"I"<IwI_
>1 Il : 1.1024079n
,..

m: 266.4p
0": 29.45p

M: 1.329n
n: 34.74k

Neg \lYid(Cl)! 1.01Sns

p: 1.0323093n
M: 2.145n
m: 1.074n
0": 23.7p
n: 34.74k
Pk-Pk(Cl)

3.56 V
II: 3.568903
m: 3.315
M: 3.740
a: 7.776m
n: 34.74k

10
Chl

l.aV

{}

M 2O.0ns S.OGSIs
A Chl / 720m"l

Input Amplitude(Vpp)
800psl\:M

Fig. 6 Relation input and output amplitude

Fig. 4 Monocycle pulse of Ultra-Wideband pulse generator

B. Responses ofProposed UWB Pulse Generator

Fig. 5 plots the relationship between input pulse signal with

different pulse repetition rate on the abscissa and the output
amplitude on the ordinate. The maximum input voltage was
fixed at 4.0 Volts while we varied the pulse width. When we
increased the input pulse width from IOns to 100 ns, the
output amplitude increased accordingly. However, the pulse
generator provided higher output amplitude when the input
pulse width was larger and with better higher pulse repetition
frequency. This is due to the requirement of energy storage
duration inside the SRD which must be equal to or longer than
the carrier lifetime of the SRD at 30 ns [10]. Based on these
results, the prototype will operate with better response when
the input pulse is larger than 30 ns and has pulse repetition
frequency that is higher than 5 MHz.

Fig.7 reports the relationship between the input edge time

(rise time) and the output amplitude when we fixed the
maximum input voltage to 4.0 Volts. From the graph, we
observed that the longer the duration of input edge time, the
lower the output amplitude. These results suggest that shorter
input edge time should be fed into the circuit to provide higher
output signal. Once again, the higher pulse repetition
frequency of more than 5 MHz should be used to achieve
higher output amplitude.

a:

---+- pulse width 10ns

2.

-+- pulse width 3Dns

3.5

--e-- pulse width 50ns

--e- pulse width 70ns

--'i'- pulse width lOOns

Edge time(ns)

Fig. 7 Relation of input edge time and output amplitude

Frequency (MHz)

Fig. 5 Relation of input pulse width and output amplitude

Fig. 6 depicts the relationship between the input amplitude

and the output amplitude of the impulse shaping circuit when
we adjusted the input pulse repetition frequency. The graph in
Fig. 6 is almost linear which means the output pulses were

Fig.8 illustrates the relationship of input edge time (rise

time) and output pulse width when we fixed the maximum
input voltage at 4.0 Volts. The shorter output pulse width is
possible when the input edge time was shorter. To achieve a
shorter pulse width for UWB pulse at the output, the input
pulse should have shorter edge time. Since our arbitrary
waveform generator Agilent 33250A had a limitation of 5 ns
for the narrowest edge time. We plan to introduce a CMOS
buffer circuit using a Schmitt-trigger type input into the driver
of the UWB pulse generator as suggested in [10]. A Schmitt
trigger
buffer
device
called
74ACTl4
from
ST-

1130

Microelectronics [16] can be used to reduce the rise time of

input square wave to less than 2 ns in our preliminary
experiment.
18 rr===I=== ---r---:----------,
- IMHz

16

--.r- 3MHz
--e--- 5MHz

14
"'

12
.

-s 10
D.-

E- 8

<3

V. CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE WORK

In this paper, we presented a UWB pulse generator with a
novel idea of using cascode transistors operating as pulse
shaping to generate Gaussian-like pulse. The circuit in this
work allows a UWB generator to create short and high
amplitude Gaussian pulse at low cost using only a few
components. This circuit is aimed at law enforcement and
security applications which limit our frequency to the
spectrum which is lower than 960MHz. To adjust the center
frequency of the UWB signal, we could adjust the pulse
repetition rate. In the future work, we will modifY this circuit
to reduce the ringing of the impulse signal and try to reduce
the pulse width to be in the order of picoseconds using a
technique such as Schmitt-trigger edge driver.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT

This work was supported by Thailand Graduate Institute of

Science and Technology (TGIST) National Science and
Technology Development Agency, No.TG-44-13-52-063M

Edge time(ns)
Fig. 8 Relation of input edge time and output pulse width

C. Comparison of UWB Pulse Generators

REFERENCES

Table II shows the comparison between our work and

other pulse generators in the literature that used pulse shaping
circuits such as coupled line, delay line, BJT + lumped circuit,
and short circuit stub. From the table, our proposed work has
low input pulse amplitude. On the other hand, it has the
highest output amplitude at 3.56 V because of the cascode
pulse shaping.

Ref.

(5)

(6)

(9)

(10)

This
work

Input
Amplitude

10

N/A

4.0

5.0

4.0
[6]

110

986

120-280

896

3560

(mVp-p)
width(ps)
Pulse
shaping
Circuit
Waveform

[3]

[5]

(Vp-p)

Pulse

[2]

[4]

TABLE II
COMPARISON OF THIS WOKE TO OTHER PuLSE GENERATORS

Output
Amplitude

[1]

[7]
300

333

300-600

340

Couple
Line

Delay
Line

BJT+
Lumped

Circuit

Monocycle

ShortStub

Impulse

1000
Cascode
BJT

[8]

Impulse

[9]

However, the weakness of our UWB pulse generator circuit

is that the output pulse duration is still the longest among all
in the table. The cause of this may lie in the frequency
response of the BJTs used in the cascode circuit. To reduce
this pulse width into the order of sub-nanoseconds, we plan to
introduce a Schmitt-trigger driver circuit in future work. Note
that our circuit does not require an external power supply to
operate the pulse shaping circuit. Finally, the output UWB
pulse in this work is still a Gaussian shape. In some
applications, a Gaussian monocycle may be required as in [5,
6, and 9]. We can extend the output of this work with a
distributed transmission line structure to form a monocycle
pulse as described in [15].

[10]

[11]
[12]
[13]
[14]
[15]
[16]

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