With fast growing consumer demand for high speed mobile data capacity, wireless spectrum has become increasingly precious. This drives the evolution of the personal wireless communication, with new standards developed to improve the spectral efficiency. However, the available spectrum below 10GHz is very limited and packing more bits per second into the same bandwidth requires larger energy consumption as well as more stringent radio and MODEM performance. As a result, such an approach is not sustainable for meeting the future demand. A natural path is to move into higher frequency bands which have larger spectrum bandwidth but less commercial usage. Recent years have witnessed vast technology development on V-band (60GHz) Wireless Personal Area Networks (WPAN) and E-band (80GHz) point-to-point cellular backhauls. Meanwhile, the advancement of low-cost CMOS technologies enables researchers to significantly improve the integration level of high speed mm-wave radios with traditional analog and digital circuitry. However, current mm-wave radio transmitters suffer from short communication distance and low energy efficiency. This is mainly caused by the reduced performance of the CMOS transmitters employing traditional Power Amplifiers (PAs) that suffer from low transistor breakdown voltage, low power gain and poor back-off characteristics. This dissertation investigates the challenges of designing efficient mm-wave transmitters for both long range and short range applications, and proposes concepts and techniques that can potentially break the barriers imposed by the low cost digital CMOS process. The scope of investigation and proposal extends from the architecture level down to the transistor level. Specifically, on-chip and spatial power combining techniques are analyzed and implemented to achieve larger transmitter Equivalent Isotropically Radiated Power (EIRP). To enhance the average efficiency for modulated signals with high Peak-to-Average-Power-Ratio (PAPR), a direct digital-to-RF conversion architecture is proposed and implemented, enabling dynamic DC power scaling. Finally, a Quadrature Spatial Combining concept is introduced to eliminate the tradeoff between low insertion loss and high isolation present in a traditional Cartesian architecture with on-chip signal combiners. Prototype chips are fabricated and tested in 65nm CMOS technology to verify the proposed architectures and techniques.

RF and mm-Wave Power Generation in Silicon presents the challenges and solutions of designing power amplifiers at RF and mm-Wave frequencies in a silicon-based process technology. It covers practical power amplifier design methodologies, energy- and spectrum-efficient power amplifier design examples in the RF frequency for cellular and wireless connectivity applications, and power amplifier and power generation designs for enabling new communication and sensing applications in the mm-Wave and THz frequencies. With this book you will learn: Power amplifier design fundamentals and methodologies Latest advances in silicon-based RF power amplifier architectures and designs and their integration in wireless communication systems State-of-the-art mm-Wave/THz power amplifier and power generation circuits and systems in silicon Extensive coverage from fundamentals to advanced design topics, focusing on various layers of abstraction: from device modeling and circuit design strategy to advanced digital and mixed-signal architectures for highly efficient and linear power amplifiers New architectures for power amplifiers in the cellar and wireless connectivity covering detailed design methodologies and state-of-the-art performances Detailed design techniques, trade-off analysis and design examples for efficiency enhancement at power back-off and linear amplification for spectrally-efficient non-constant envelope modulations Extensive coverage of mm-Wave power-generation techniques from the early days of the 60 GHz research to current state-of the-art reconfigurable, digital mm-Wave PA architectures Detailed analysis of power generation challenges in the higher mm-Wave and THz frequencies and novel technical solutions for a wide range for potential applications, including ultrafast wireless communication to sensing, imaging and spectroscopy Contributions from the world-class experts from both academia and industry

Build high-performance, energy-efficient circuits with this cutting-edge guide to designing, modeling, analysing, implementing and testing new mm-wave systems.

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.

This book addresses in-depth technical issues, limitations, considerations and challenges facing millimeter-wave (MMW) integrated circuit and system designers in designing MMW wireless communication systems from the complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) perspective. It offers both a comprehensive explanation of fundamental theories and a broad coverage of MMW integrated circuits and systems.CMOS Millimeter-Wave Integrated Circuits for Next Generation Wireless Communication Systems is an excellent reference for faculty, researchers and students working in electrical and electronic engineering, wireless communication, integrated circuit design and circuits and systems. While primarily written for upper-level undergraduate courses, it is also an excellent introduction to the subject for instructors, graduate students, researchers, integrated circuit designers and practicing engineers. Advanced readers could also benefit from this book as it includes many recent state-of-the-art MMW circuits.

The Definitive, Comprehensive Guide to Cutting-Edge Millimeter Wave Wireless Design “This is a great book on mmWave systems that covers many aspects of the technology targeted for beginners all the way to the advanced users. The authors are some of the most credible scholars I know of who are well respected by the industry. I highly recommend studying this book in detail.” —Ali Sadri, Ph.D., Sr. Director, Intel Corporation, MCG mmWave Standards and Advanced Technologies Millimeter wave (mmWave) is today's breakthrough frontier for emerging wireless mobile cellular networks, wireless local area networks, personal area networks, and vehicular communications. In the near future, mmWave products, systems, theories, and devices will come together to deliver mobile data rates thousands of times faster than today's existing cellular and WiFi networks. In Millimeter Wave Wireless Communications, four of the field's pioneers draw on their immense experience as researchers, entrepreneurs, inventors, and consultants, empowering engineers at all levels to succeed with mmWave. They deliver exceptionally clear and useful guidance for newcomers, as well as the first complete desk reference for design experts. The authors explain mmWave signal propagation, mmWave circuit design, antenna designs, communication theory, and current standards (including IEEE 802.15.3c, Wireless HD, and ECMA/WiMedia). They cover comprehensive mmWave wireless design issues, for 60 GHz and other mmWave bands, from channel to antenna to receiver, introducing emerging design techniques that will be invaluable for research engineers in both industry and academia. Topics include Fundamentals: communication theory, channel propagation, circuits, antennas, architectures, capabilities, and applications Digital communication: baseband signal/channel models, modulation, equalization, error control coding, multiple input multiple output (MIMO) principles, and hardware architectures Radio wave propagation characteristics: indoor and outdoor applications Antennas/antenna arrays, including on-chip and in-package antennas, fabrication, and packaging Analog circuit design: mmWave transistors, fabrication, and transceiver design approaches Baseband circuit design: multi–gigabit-per-second, high-fidelity DAC and ADC converters Physical layer: algorithmic choices, design considerations, and impairment solutions; and how to overcome clipping, quantization, and nonlinearity Higher-layer design: beam adaptation protocols, relaying, multimedia transmission, and multiband considerations 60 GHz standardization: IEEE 802.15.3c for WPAN, Wireless HD, ECMA-387, IEEE 802.11ad, Wireless Gigabit Alliance (WiGig)

This book introduces a completely novel architecture that can relax the trade-off existing today between noise, power and area consumption in a very suitable solution for advanced wireless communication systems. Through the combination of charge-domain operation with incremental signaling, this architecture gives the best of both worlds, providing the reduced area and high portability of digital-intensive architectures with an improved out-of-band noise performance given by intrinsic noise filtering capabilities. Readers will be enabled to design higher performance radio front-ends that consume less power and area, especially with respect to the transmitter and power amplifier designs, considered by many the “battery killers” on most mobile devices.