Radio-Frequency Digital-to-Analog Converters

With the proliferation of wireless networks, there is a need for more compact, low-cost, power efficient transmitters that are capable of supporting the various communication standards, including Bluetooth, WLAN, GSM/EDGE, WCDMA and 4G of 3GPP cellular. This book describes a novel idea of RF digital-to-analog converters (RFDAC) and demonstrates how they can realize all-digital, fully-integrated RF transmitters that support all the current multi-mode and multi-band communication standards. With this book the reader will:
- Understand the challenges of realizing a universal CMOS RF transmitter
- Recognize the design issues and the advantages and disadvantages related to analog and digital transmitter architectures
- Master designing an RF transmitter from system level modeling techniques down to circuitdesigns and their related layout know-hows
- Grasp digital polar and I/Q calibration techniques as well as the digital predistortion approaches
- Learn how to generate appropriate digital I/Q baseband signals in order to apply them to the test chip and measure the RF-DAC performance.
- Highlights the benefits and implementation challenges of software-defined transmitters using CMOS technology
- Includes various types of analog and digital RF transmitter architectures for wireless applications
- Presents an all-digital polar RFDAC transmitter architecture and describes in detail its implementation
- Presents a new all-digital I/Q RFDAC transmitter architecture and its implementation
- Provides comprehensive design techniques from system level to circuit level
- Introduces several digital predistortion techniques which can be used in RF transmitters
- Describes the entire flow of system modeling, circuit simulation, layout techniques and the measurement process

Morteza Alavi received his MSc degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Tehran, Iran, in 2006. His research is focused on designing power-efficient wide-bandwidth digital RF I/Q transmitters. Morteza received the "Best Student Paper Award- 2nd Place" at 2013 IEEE Radio Frequency Integrated Circuits (RFIC) Symposium in Seattle, USA.Jaimin Mehta received his PhD degree from The University of Texas at Dallas. His research focused on digitally-intensive polar transmitters. He is currently working as a staff design engineer at Cirrus Logic in Austin, Texas.Before becoming a university professor in 2009, Robert Bogdan Staszewski was a design engineer / industrial researcher for over 18 years, working in microelectronics and communication systems. He concentrated on large system-on-chip (SoC) designs for wireless applications and before that was involved in analog, RF, mixed-signal and digital designs. His approach is always to discover novel solutions that offer clear advantages over existing designs. His commitment to innovation and quality has resulted in him developing tens of full-custom mixed-signal complex IC chips. He is an IEEE Fellow for his contributions to the digital RF communications systems.

1. Introduction2. Digital Polar Transmitter Architecture3. Digital Baseband of The Polar Transmitter4. RF Front-End (RFDAC) of the Polar Transmitter5. Situation Measurement Results of the Polar Transmitter6. Idea of All-Digital I/Q Modulator7. Orthogonal Summation: A 2x3-Bit All-Digital I/Q RF-DAC8. Towards High-Resolution RF-DAC: The System Design Perspective9. Differential I/Q DPA and Power Combining Network10. A Wideband 2x13-Bit All-Digital I/Q RFDAC11. Measurement Results of the 2x13-Bit I/Q RFDAC12. Conclusions Appendix A. Polar TransmitterAppendix B. I/Q RFDAC