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.