Abstract
This paper is a survey paper presenting the Nordic CONFRONT
project and reporting some results from the group at CIE/DTU,
Denmark. The objective of the project is to demonstrate the
feasibility of sub-micron CMOS for the realisation of RF front-end
circuits operating at frequencies in the 1.8-2.0 GHz range. The
ultimate goal is a single-chip transceiver, requiring only an
external band-pass filter between the chip and the antenna. DECT
has been chosen as a comparative standard to compare the new
approaches developed in the work as well as to facilitate good
knowledge transfer to industry. All circuit design is based on
state-of-the-art CMOS technology (0.5µm and below) including
circuits operating at 2GHz. CMOS technology is chosen, since a
CMOS implementation is likely to be significantly cheaper than a
bipolar or a BiCMOS solution, and it offers the possibility to
integrate the predominantly digital base-band processing on the
same chip. Presently, only few examples of CMOS used for RF
front-end circuits have been presented by academia, and so far no
commercial products exist. The approach has been to do a CMOS
block by block replacement of the blocks in traditional
transceiver architectures. We feel that this approach is not
ideal, since the excellent sampling properties of CMOS are not
utilised. Therefore, the work focuses on developing transceiver
architectures and circuits that truly exploit the desirable
properties. At the same time, the work will investigate the
possibility of including good off-chip components in the design by
use of innovative, inexpensive package technology.To achieve a
higher level of integration, the project will use a novel codesign
approach to the design strategy. Rather than making specifications
based on a purely architectural approach, the work uses a
concurrent approach, where circuit designers and architecture
designers co-operate on the design and specifications. This allows
more circuit issues to be included in the overall architecture,
hopefully resulting in an architecture with circuit blocks suited
for full integration.
Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | Mixed Analogue Digital Design |
Publisher | Kluwer |
Publication date | 1997 |
Publication status | Published - 1997 |
Event | 4th International Workshop, Mixed Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems - Poznan, Poland Duration: 12 Jun 1997 → 14 Jun 1997 Conference number: 4 |
Workshop
Workshop | 4th International Workshop, Mixed Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems |
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Number | 4 |
Country/Territory | Poland |
City | Poznan |
Period | 12/06/1997 → 14/06/1997 |