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Nanoscale CMOS Transceiver Implementation for a Software-Defined Radio Platform

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Digitally-Assisted Analog and RF CMOS Circuit Design for Software-Defined Radio

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Abstract

A Software-Defined Radio (SDR) should theoretically receive and transmit any modulated frequency channel in the (un)licensed spectrum, targeting all modern communication standards relevant for a modern handheld mobile device (2G/3G/4G cellular, Wireless Local Area Networks (WLAN), Bluetooth, Global Positioning System (GPS), broadcasting, etc.). Moreover, it should guarantee top performance with energy savings, while still being integrated in a digital CMOS technology. In this chapter, a practical front-end implementation for such an SDR concept is demonstrated, including local oscillator, transmitter and receiver in the frequency range 0.1–6 GHz. Circuits and architectures are optimized for minimal area occupation in a standard digital 40 nm low-power (LP) CMOS technology. The radio front-end compares favorably with state-of-the-art dedicated radios while enabling, for the first time, wideband reconfigurable performance and energy scalability.

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Acknowledgment

The work presented here is the result of a large team effort, and the author would like to thank Jonathan Borremans, Björn Debaillie, Vito Giannini, Dries Hauspie, Mark Ingels, Gunjan Mandal, Pierluigi Nuzzo, Julien Ryckaert, Tomohiro Sano, Charlotte Soens, Joris Van Driessche, Peter Van Wesemael, Kameswaran Vengattaramane and Takaya Yamamoto for their contribution. This research has been carried out in the context of imec’s Green Radio Program and is partly sponsored by M4S, Panasonic, Renesas Electronics Corporation and Samsung.

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  1. IMEC, Kapeldreef 75, 3000, Leuven, Belgium

    Jan Craninckx

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  1. Jan Craninckx
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Correspondence to Jan Craninckx .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. , Department of Physical Electronics, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Ookayama Meguro-ku 2-12-1-S3-, Tokyo, 152-8552, Japan

    Kenichi Okada

  2. Toshiba Corp., Advanced Circuit Design Dept., Center for Semiconductor Research and De, Horikawa-cho Saiwai-ku 580-1, Kawasaki, 212-8520, Japan

    Shouhei Kousai

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Craninckx, J. (2011). Nanoscale CMOS Transceiver Implementation for a Software-Defined Radio Platform. In: Okada, K., Kousai, S. (eds) Digitally-Assisted Analog and RF CMOS Circuit Design for Software-Defined Radio. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-8514-9_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-8514-9_2

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