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Product category: Communications ICs (Wireless)
News Release from: Texas Instruments (April 2001-March 2006)
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial Team on 12 February 2003

Digital RF architecture
alters wireless landscape

Texas Instruments is presenting its unique vision for digital RF architectures, built in low-power CMOS technology, for its SoC products at the International Solid State Circuits Conference

Texas Instruments is presenting its unique vision for digital RF architectures, built in cost-effective, low-power CMOS technology, for its system-on-chip products at the prestigious International Solid State Circuits Conference. Last year TI announced its intention to integrate the RF, digital and analogue basebands, memory and power management components of a cellphone on a single chip and to sample the product in 2004.

'Adapting digital CMOS for processing radio frequency signals has the potential to revolutionise wireless communications and Texas Instruments is ahead of the curve in making this technology part of our offering', said Bill Krenik, Advanced Architecture Manager, TI wireless terminals Business Unit.

'We believe customers will use this technology to reduce system cost, size and power consumption in dramatic ways'.

TI's single-chip cellphone solutions planned for 2004 will include wireless protocol software, digital and analogue baseband, applications processing functionality, power management, RF and embedded memory.

TI is using its aggressive integration approach to optimise cellular systems, delivering higher performance, very small form factors and lower system costs.

As an example, TI offers its OMAP710, OMAP730 and OMAP732 wireless processors that integrate a GSM/GPRS modem baseband subsystem with a dedicated application processor on a single chip.

Smartphones and wireless PDAs based on TI's OMAP7xx solutions are in production today.

Traditional radio transceivers have used stages of low-noise amplifiers, mixers, and filters; often produced using specialised analogue process technologies.

More recently, analogue circuits have been integrated with digital logic in low power, cost effective CMOS to meet the fundamental needs for radio reception.

Taking the evolution one step further, TI is adopting a digital RF architecture using sampled data processing techniques to condition the signal in the course of the frequency translation, resulting in a robust receiver that requires no off-chip intermediate filtering stages and is suitable for integration into advanced CMOS.

Competitive alternatives use multi-chip solutions built with SiGe or BiCMOS RF technology, increasing total system cost, bill of materials and power consumption.

TI has demonstrated its unique ability to overcome the difficult challenges of integrating analogue, power management and RF technologies cost effectively in digital CMOS technology.

For example, the first implementation of TI's digital RF architecture, the BRF6100, is currently sampling and is the first single-chip Bluetooth solution to integrate a digital RF processor, Bluetooth digital and analogue basebands, power management and memory on one chip to reduce cost and minimise board space.

As the trend toward smaller, more integrated products continues, TI's advanced process technology will allow TI the flexibility to mix and match digital analogue, RF and memory components as needed to meet the needs of the company's broad base of customers.

In January TI began producing wireless communication chips with the 90nm manufacturing technology TI will use to reach the cellphone on a chip goal.

'Traditionally, making the various chip components for a wireless terminal required a number of unique manufacturing processes.

TI's digital RF architecture allows the analogue and RF functions to be integrated on-chip using high-volume, cost-effective CMOS technology', said Dennis Buss, Vice President of Silicon Technology Development at TI.

'Having an established track record in analogue and RF circuit design, as well as demonstrated expertise at integrating those functions with advanced digital signal processing architectures, TI will continue to lead the industry wireless integration'.

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