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IMEC, Renesas research reconfigurable RF transceivers

Renesas has joined IMEC's software defined radio front-end program to research new technologies for multi-standard RF transceivers and early realization of next-generation mobile phones.

By Ann Steffora Mutschler, Senior Editor -- EDN, 5/28/2008

To perform research on 45-nm RF transceivers targeting Gbit/s cognitive radios, Tokyo, Japan-based semiconductor supplier Renesas Technology Corp has entered into a strategic research collaboration with  IMEC and has joined the Leuven, Belgium-based nanoelectronics and nanotechnology research center's software-defined radio (SDR) front-end program.

This research includes reconfigurable RF solutions, high-speed/low-power analog-to-digital converters (ADCs), and new approaches to digitize future RF architectures, IMEC and Renesas said.

To bolster development of future mobile electronics products, Renesas said it will place researchers onsite at IMEC to closely collaborate with the research team there.

In the near term, IMEC said its SDR-front-end program targets the development of a new generation cost-, performance- and power-competitive reconfigurable radio in 45-nm digital CMOS technology, which will contain a programmable center frequency from 100MHz to 6GHz and programmable bandwidth from 100kHz to 40MHz to cover key communication standards, with a merit comparable to state-of-the-art single mode transceivers.

IMEC also noted that the research program builds on its previous 130-nm RF transceiver results, namely, what it believes is the world’s first prototype of a true SDR transceiver IC. Also, further evolutions of IMEC’s ADCs will be developed within this collaboration.

“The ability to develop an innovative RF architecture with scaled-down CMOS technology and circuit technologies in transceiver products supporting next-generation cellular standards such as 3GPP-LTE and 4G's is one of the key differentiators for our products that are superior in cost advantages, performance and power,” Masao Nakaya, board director and executive general manager of LSI product technology unit at Renesas, said in a statement.