IMEC, Renesas develop reconfigurable RF transceiver in 40nm CMOS

PARIS — IMEC (Leuven, Belgium) and its reconfigurable radio program partners Renesas Technology Corp. (Tokyo, Japan) and M4S (Leuven, Belgium) claimed they have developed a single-chip reconfigurable multi-standard wireless transceiver in 40nm low-power CMOS.

Partners indicated that the receiver is software configurable across all channels in the frequency bands between 100MHz and 6GHz, and the transmitter reaches low out-of-band noise, targeting SAW-less 3GPP-LTE operation.

Then, the fully reconfigurable transceiver is compatible with various wireless standards and applications, including the upcoming mobile broadband 3GPP-LTE standard. It integrates multi-standard programmability in a 5mm chip and targets recent single mode radios in mobile devices —handsets, smart phones, PDAs, PC cards, USB dongles.

In the next phase of the Green Radio research program, IMEC said it aims to continue to reduce the bill of materials and energy consumption by pursuing research on digitally-inspired SAX-less transceivers and power efficient transmitters.

Renesas joined IMEC reconfigurable RF program in 2008 to perform research on 45-nm RF transceivers targeting cognitive radios capable of sending and receiving data at gigabits per second.