This article presents a compact measurement system for electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) on lithium-ion battery (LIB). The system is composed of a vector impedance analyzer (VIA) and state parameter estimation. The VIA architecture is based on delta-sigma digital-to-analog and analog-to-digital conversions to achieve the compactness, low-power consumption, and high resolution required to be potentially integrated within a battery cell. The estimation of state parameters is based on equivalent circuit models and the solution of nonlinear optimization problems. The proposed measurement system aims at the integration of complex measurement features directly into the battery cell to allow online and real-time diagnostic of the battery cell. A prototype of the compact measurement system was realized to assess the proposed approach. Experimental results are provided and validated by comparison with a reference laboratory instrument, showing good agreement. The VIA prototype is experimentally tested in both the online monitoring and aging monitoring of a commercial LIR2032 LIB cell. The modeling approach is applied to the experimental data provided by the VIA prototype, showing a good fit of the data. Moreover, parameters of the equivalent circuit models are extracted from the experimental data provided by the VIA prototype and identify trends related to the state of charge of the battery.

This paper presents a broadband ([dc-megahertz (MHz)]) current sensor for power applications, which is based only on a Hall-effect probe as the core sensing element. Unlike common solutions for broadband current sensing, the proposed architecture is suitable for integration of the measurement system on the same low-cost CMOS chip used for the power electronics (e.g., Bipolar-CMOS-DMOS), without the need for external transformers and allowing for the realization of “smart power circuits.” The Hall-effect probe is biased by implementing the offset compensation-oriented spinning-current technique through a novel front-end, designed to push the operative bandwidth toward the fundamental limit of the probe. Specifically, the proposed front-end employs switches, which are typical of spinning-current techniques, only for biasing the Hall probe, while the readout process is performed by minimum-sized differential amplifiers. In this way, the capacitive load seen by the Hall probe is minimized and the sensor practical bandwidth upper limit is strongly increased. A prototype of the proposed architecture was operated at 8-MHz spinning frequency and characterized by means of standard figures of merit, demonstrating the broadband capability and an adequate overall performance. At the same time, the prototype revealed a new bandwidth limit, masked in conventional architectures by stronger capacitance-induced effects, which is represented by a degradation of the effectiveness of the spinning-current technique. Measured performance is comparable to that of standard, nonintegrated, current sensors, demonstrating the effectiveness of the presented purely Hall approach for broadband current sensing. The architecture was validated by discussing two case studies typical of power applications.

Standard dynamic characterization methods based on periodic narrow-pulse low duty-cycle excitation waveforms provide suboptimal I/V curves when used along with GaN field effect transistors (FETs), due to complex nonlinear charge trapping effects. Thus, a double-pulse technique for the dynamic characterization of GaN FETs is here presented. The double-pulsed I/V characteristics are shown to be not only isothermal but also corresponding to a fixed charge trapping state.

A Ka-band monolithic low-noise amplifier (LNA) with high gain and high dynamic range (DR) has been designed and implemented in a 100-nm gallium nitride (GaN)-on-Si technology. The LNA is designed as the first stage of a high DR receiver in an frequency modulated continuous wave (FMCW) radar for the detection of small drones. The three-stage monolithic microwave integrated circuit (MMIC) LNA has a linear gain of 26 dB and a noise figure (NF) of 2 dB in the frequency band 33-38 GHz. The output 1-dB compression point (P1dB) and output IP3 at 37 GHz are 20 and 28.4 dBm, respectively. To our knowledge, this combination of NF, gain, and DR performance represents the state of art in this frequency band.

This letter unfolds a digital predistortion (DPD) technique that improves the linearity of limited range mobile front haul links for the contemporary long-term evolution (LTE) and future (5G) networks. In particular, the proposed technique is applied to radio-over-fiber links based on single-mode (SM) vertical cavity surface emitting lasers emitting at 850 nm and standard SM fibers. Both the memory and generalized memory polynomial models are exploited for the predistorter and identified by utilizing indirect learning architecture. The impact of the DPD technique is observed by the link performance improvement in terms of normalized mean square error and adjacent channel power ratio, referring to complete LTE frames of 10 ms occupying 5-MHz bandwidth and having 64-quadrature amplitude modulation format. Furthermore, the effectiveness of the DPD approach, when varying input power levels, is investigated. The experimental results demonstrate the capability of the proposed DPD technique to achieve promising linearization performance.

Online diagnostic of lithium-ion battery (LIB) cells may have significant impact on chemical energy storage systems. Electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) is widely used for the characterization of LIBs and could be the most appropriate technique for online diagnostic, but its response time should be shortened. This work investigates the usage of multisine excitation to shorten the measurement time and simplify the hardware implementation for EIS of battery cells. Two types of multisine binary sequences are considered: sigma–delta modulated multisine sequences (SDMSs) and maximum length binary sequences (MLBSs). Their applicability to online and in situ EIS monitoring is evaluated by designing a measurement architecture also suitable to be implemented in a system-on-chip. The calibrated measurement system is compared with a benchtop reference instrument, reporting an RMSE deviation smaller than 5% in the frequency range of interest 1–200 Hz. The realized system is then used for online monitoring of the discharge process of a commercial 18650 LIB cell. The two proposed sequences are compared in terms of accuracy using a digital battery emulator circuit. Both the sequences demonstrated to be suitable for fast measurement and simple hardware integration, enabling online in situ EIS monitoring at cell level.