Research On Reconfigurable RF Receiver Front-End ICs For Broadband Wireless Communication System

With the rapid development of wireless communication technology,mobile communciation has evolved over four generations,from mobile cellular to digital cellular,then recently CDMA and LTE.The fourth-generation mobile communication(4G)has been commercialized,and now the fifth-generation mobile communication(5G)research is in full speed development.The trend of mobile communciation standard development is a single mobile communication device can be compatible with a variety of communication standards,for example,the mobil phone that currently commercially available with 4G and short range wireless communication systems such as Bluetooth and Wireless Local Area Networks(WLAN).With the demand for multiple communication standards compatibility and function diversity,transceiver systems capable of operating in multiple modes and in multiple frequency bands have become critical.The current transceiver system solution includes a complete set of transceiver chips for each communication mode,and in the same mode,each frequency band needs a low noise amplifier chip.This chip solution is characterized by the effective use of existing chip technology which can help reducing development cycle and cost,but the problem is that with the increase of communication modes and frequency bands,especially the need of multi-channel technology,the complexity of the transceiver and the chip area are greatly increased,thereby increasing the area of the communication system and cost.Therefore,in the design of multi modes and multi bands RF transceivers,in order to achieve more modes and frequency bands,and improve level of integration and reuse,reconfigurable RF chip technology has become an important technical solution to solve the problem.With the support of National Science and Technology Major Project,this theis reserch the reconfigurable Radio Frequency Intergrate Chip(RFIC)for LTE-Advanced and other broadband wireless communication systems.Based on CMOS process,focusing on the frequency from 0.7~6GHz,this theis completed the design and implementation of RF front-end IC with low cost,high performance,high integration,and wide range of working bandwidth and channel bandwidth reconfigurable.The work of this theis can be summarized as follows:1.By studying technical requirements for multimode multiband RF transceivers for the current application scenarios of multimode broadband wireless communication,combined with the structure and characteristics of RF front-end IC,multiple transceiver channels are combined,or some RFICs are multiplexed,such as low noise amplifier and mixer forms a multi-mode multi-band RF chip solution with reconfigurable architecture.Based on this,two multi mode and multi band RF reconfigurable IC architecture solutions with reconfigurable architecture are presented: Dual-band scheme and full-band scheme.Both solutions achieve broadband coverage,compatibility or merger of multiple modes,while avoiding the complexity of different chips in different modes of transceiver RF front-end,meets the flexible requirements of broadband access in multi-mode communication system application scenarios,and provides low-complexity,low-cost chip technology support for reconfigurable RF transceiver systems.2.Focusing on dual-band RF reconfigurable IC architecture,this theis studies the design and implementation technology of dual-band reconfigurable RFIC,especially the technology for reconfigurable RF front-end IC using reconfigurable units based on tunable load networks.Among the dual-band reconfigurable low-noise amplifier(LNA),a dual-tuned load network is designed,which has the advantages of flexible performance tuning and small area.The designed dual-band switching input circuit structure reduces the effect of non-ideal factors caused by the switch on the overall performance of the circuit and improves the isolation and matching performance of the dual band.In the dual-band reconfigurable mixer,a wideband-based Gilbert double-balanced folded structure is designed,and a dual-tuned load network is designed to achieve good dual-band reconfigurability.The reconfigurable unit adopts a capacitor unit with small area,high precision and low noise to implement dual-band reconfigurable function,and achieve the compromise of chip area and performance.Base on 0.13?m CMOS process,dual-band broadband reconfigurable RF front-end ICs for the mobile communication standard IMT-2020 and short-distance communication standard Ultra Wide Band(UWB)has been implemented.The frequency band covers 3.4~3.6GHz and 4.2~4.8GHz,with 100 MHz RF bandwidth.The test results show that the designed dual-band reconfigurable RF chip can achieve the balance between key performances such as gain,linearity and noise while being reconfigurable in dual-band,in two far-distance frequency bands.3.For the full-band RF reconfigurable IC architecture solution,this theis studies the design and implementation technology of the full-band reconfigurable RFIC,especially for the popular architecture and performance characteristics of the RF front-end IC,and comprehensively analyze various broadband design technologies,including negative feedback and parallel peaking,etc.For the full-band reconfigurable low-noise amplifier,a three-level topology is designed and combined with wideband chip technologys to achieve comprehensive optimization of gain,broadband matching and noise performance.In the full-band reconfigurable mixer,based on the wideband Gilbert double-balanced folded structure,used the current source parallel degeneration capacitor technology to achieve wideband and linearity by optimizing the transistor parameters of the core device,especially the parameters of local oscillator switching transistors,optimized the performance balance between bandwidth,linearity,and noise performance.Base on 0.13?m CMOS process,a broadband reconfigurable RF front-end ICs has been implemented for the sub-6GHz wireless communication standards.The test results show that the implemented full-band reconfigurable RFIC achieves great performance from 700 MHz to 6GHz frequency band.4.Finally,this thesis used the reconfigurable RFIC to complete the module and system verification.Using the reconfigurable RF front-end IC implemented in this thesis,module verified in typical frequency for LTE-Advanced: 2.3,2.4,2.5 GHz,typical frequency of IMT-2020: 3.4,3.6 GHz,and typical frequency of UWB;4.2,4.5,4.8 GHz,etc.Using the baseband signal with the LTE-Advanced specification,this thesis completed 4-channel system transfer experiment verification.The results of the spectrum,constellation and signal-to-noise ratio of the transmitted signal show that the broadband reconfigurable RFIC realized in this thesis can support 100 MHz in the band of 700MHz~6GHz,which can meet the requirement of multi-antenna configuration in broadband system.