Transceiver Architectures for Highly Integrated RF Front‐Ends

Abstract

The twenty-first century has been witnessing a tremendous demand for wireless (untethered) communications and information services, such as Personal Communications Services (PCS – 3G, 4G, and beyond), wireless data networks and internet access, position location, navigation, roadway informatics, and wireless sensor networks. While cost and form factor (size and weight) have been primary drivers in the commercial arena, military systems must also be highly reliable, rapidly reconfigurable, aware of their user/location/environment, and robust in the quality of service under a wide range of hostile environmental conditions. Of course, in both arenas, by definition, mobility demands low power dissipation. The necessity for low-cost and high-efficiency system implementations for these untethered communications and sensor capabilities has generated an explosion in the development of integrated circuit and packaging technologies, in both commercial and military sectors. For example, radio frequency integrated circuits (RFICs) and/or monolithic microwave (or mm-wave) integrated circuits (MMICs) are generally packaged together with very large scale integrated (VLSI) digital signal processing (DSP) and microprocessor ( P) control chips in advanced multichip modules (MCMs) or system-in-package/system-on-package (SiP/SoP) implementations. Figure 13.1(a) shows a conceptual diagram of such an MCM for an RF wireless communications node. The figure shows the various functional chips fabricated in different integrated circuit (IC) technologies (e.g. GaAs HBT for power amplifiers, SiGe BiCMOS for low-noise receivers, and Si CMOS for baseband and digital processing), connected to the system using conventional wirebonding or solder ball grid arrays (BGAs). In addition, discrete high-quality passives (or embedded passives in the MCM carrier), and even antennas, can be provided as well. A key advantage of this approach is that the