Integrated SAW-less RF Front-End for Wireless Receivers
Mon, 23/05/2011 - 07:31 | 
admin
Group:
Electronics
Faculty:
Topic Overview:
The noisy radio frequency (RF) environment demands a very stringent blocking requirement for most wireless applications. Generally, the blocker may affect the receiver (RX) in two ways: (1) A large out-of-band blocker can saturate the receiver frontend, and hence by reducing the receiver gain, elevate the noise contribution of the following baseband blocks. (2) An in-band blocker may desensitize the receiver due to reciprocal or spurious mixing, or through inter-modulation. A fully integrated RF front-end that eliminates the need for external SAW filter is to be designed and demonstrated as an ASIC.
Objectives:
- Understanding the fundamentals and system level design of wireless receivers.
- Getting familiar with RFIC (RF Integrated Circuits) design flow using Cadence and/or Mentor Graphics tools
- Using cutting edge process nodes such as 65nm CMOS for physical implementation of the design.
- Designing and developing the required circuitry for an integrated SAW-less RF front-end wireless receiver such as low-noise amplifier and mixer.
- Test and measure the performance of the fabricated receiver prototype.
Outcomes:
- ONE International patent covering the main idea
- (3) Research papers to be submitted to prestigious conferences and journals
- (2) MSc theses
- ASIC prototype of the designed receiver
Resources:
- (1,000,000) to cover fabrication of the chip prototype, purchase of some measuring equipment, stipend for MSc students, registration fees for related conferences, Patent application
- 2 M,Sc. Students
- Measuring equipment (network analyzer up to 4GHz, spectrum analyzer up to 4GHz, 2 RF signal generators up to 4GHz)
