Digitally Assisted, Fully Integrated, Wideband Transmitters for High-Speed Millimeter-Wave Wireless Communication Links

This book presents design methods and considerations for digitally-assisted wideband millimeter-wave transmitters. It addresses comprehensively both RF design and digital implementation simultaneously, in order to design energy- and cost-efficient high-performance transmitters for mm-wave high-speed communications. It covers the complete design flow, from link budget assessment to the transistor-level design of different RF front-end blocks, such as mixers and power amplifiers, presenting different alternatives and discussing the existing trade-offs. The authors also analyze the effect of the imperfections of these blocks in the overall performance, while describing techniques to correct and compensate for them digitally. Well-known techniques are revisited, and some new ones are described, giving examples of their applications and proving them in real integrated circuits.

Discusses the design of mm-wave transceivers from both the analog and digital design perspectives Analyzes different well-known architectures and revisits some key aspects in order to make them suitable for mmW circuits Covers design considerations at the system, block/circuit and transistor levels of abstraction Enables readers to build high-performance, energy and cost-efficient mm-wave radios Addresses circuit reliability and sensibility to environmental variations, in order to implement robust and auto-adjustable systems Analyzes quantitatively the effect of different imperfections on the performance of the whole system, and proposes different methods to compensate for them and mitigate their effects Applies design techniques described in real examples, demonstrating the transmission of multi-Gbps signals

Autorentext

David del Rio is a researcher & RFIC designer, at Ceit-IK4 Research Center & Tecnun-University of Navarra, Spain.

Ainhoa Rezola is a researcher & digital system designer, at Ceit-IK4 Research Center & Tecnun-University of Navarra, Spain.

Juan Francisco Sevillano is a Senior researcher & digital system designer, at Ceit-IK4 Research Center & Tecnun-University of Navarra, Spain.

Igone Velez is a Senior researcher & Head of ICT division, at Ceit-IK4 Research Center & Tecnun-University of Navarra, Spain.

Roc Berenguer in an Associate Professor & Senior RFIC designer, at Tecnun-University, in Navarra, Spain.

Inhalt

Introduction.- System level analysis of millimeter-wave wireless links.- Effect of Front-End Imperfections on Wideband Millimeter-Wave Signals.- Digital Compensation and Mitigation of I/Q gain and Phase Imbalance.- Design Methodology for BiCMOS mmW Integrated Circuits.- Upconverters.- Power Amplifiers.- Power Detectors.- A Fully Integrated and Digitally Assisted BiCMOS Transmitter for a 10-Gbps Wireless Link in the E-band.