A 70-Mb/s 100.5-dBm Sensitivity 65-nm LP MIMO Chipset for WiMAX Portable Router

• Published in: IEEE journal of solid-state circuits Vol. 47; no. 1; pp. 61 - 74
• Main Authors: Shyuan Liao, Yen-Shuo Chang, Chia-Hsin Wu, Hung-Chieh Tsai, Hsin-Hua Chen, Min Chen, Ching-Wen Hsueh, Jian-Bang Lin, Den-Kai Juang, Shun-An Yang, Chin-Tai Liu, Tsai-Pao Lee, Jin-Ru Chen, Chih-Heng Shih, Hong, B., Heng-Ruey Hsu, Chih-Yuan Wang, Meng-Shiang Lin, Wei-Hsiang Tseng, Che-Hsiung Yang, Lee, L. C., Ting-Jyun Jheng, Wen-Wei Yang, Ming-Yang Chao, Jyh-Shin Pan
• Format: Journal Article Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: New York, NY IEEE 01-01-2012; Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Applied sciences; Baseband; Channel estimation; Chips; Chips (electronics); chipset; Design. Technologies. Operation analysis. Testing; Digital signal processors; Electronics; Exact sciences and technology; Hardware; high sensitivity; IEEE 802.16 Standards; Input-output equipment; Integrated circuits; Integrated circuits by function (including memories and processors); low-power design; Low-power electronics; MIMO; mobile WiMAX; Modems; OFDM; orthogonal frequency-division multiple access (OFDMA); Portability; portable router; Radio frequencies; Radio frequency; RF transceiver; Routers; Semiconductor electronics. Microelectronics. Optoelectronics. Solid state devices; Signal processing; Telephones; Transceivers; VLSI implementation; WiMAX; Performance evaluation; Noise figure; Wireless telecommunication; RF transceiver; Multi-band circuit; Transceiver; Wide band; High sensitivity; Complementary MOS technology; low-power design; Mobile radiocommunication; MIMO system; High performance; Baseband; Low noise circuit; Base band; Router; chipset; Algorithm; orthogonal frequency-division multiple access (OFDMA); portable router; mobile WiMAX; Integrated circuit; Signal processing; Portable equipment; Modem; Long distance transmission; Low-power electronics; Digital signal processor; VLSI implementation
• ISSN: 0018-9200; 1558-173X
• DOI: 10.1109/JSSC.2011.2167811

In this paper, we present a low-power high-performance WiMAX chipset fully compliant with IEEE 802.16e specification corrigendum 1, 2 for mobile broadband access and WiMAX Forum system profile Wave2. The chipset is comprised of a 632.7-mW/24.99-mm 2 modem/router chip and a 364-mW/11.05- mm 2 dual-band 2 × 2 MIMO RF transceiver chip, both developed in 65-nm CMOS process. The proposed chipset is capable of handling a maximum peak WiMAX downlink (DL) throughput of 70 Mbps. Moreover, the chipset can reach up to -100.5-dBm sensitivity in a 10-MHz AWGN channel, which outperforms WiMAX Forum mobile radio conformance test (MRCT) by 9.5 dB. Such high sensitivity is due to the proposed low-noise high-linearity RF transceiver chip, which has 2.5-dB RX noise figure (NF) and -37-dB TX error vector magnitude (EVM), and the applied high-performance baseband signal processing algorithms. Several low-power design techniques-from SW level, firmware/DSP level, to HW module level-have been implemented to enable portable applications. The modem/router chip is highly integrated and has rich features and various interfaces for applications such as router or VoIP phone. Furthermore, this is the only published WiMAX chipset which has been in mass production.