This would be a nice chip for gnuradio. Scaldio: Technical specs Frequenty range: 174MHz-6GHz Channel Bandwidth: 1MHz-40MHz Vcc: 1,2V Active area: 7,7mm² Power requirements: 60-120mA Process technology: 130nm CMOS transmit and receive
http://www.imec.be/wwwinter/mediacenter/en/Scaldio_ISSCC2007.shtml IMEC realized a cost-efficient fully reconfigurable software-defined radio transceiver IC The 130nm CMOS IC covers all standards from 174MHz to 6GHz. 12-02-2007 - ISSCC 2007, San Francisco, US -- IMEC’s wideband software-defined radio (SDR) transceiver, named SCALDIO, is widely programmable to operate with all current and future cellular, WLAN, WPAN, broadcast and positioning standards in the frequency range between the 174MHz and 6GHz. The unique architecture of the multi-mode SDR transceiver has a power consumption and CMOS chip area comparable to current state-of-the-art single mode radios thereby fitting the performance, power and cost requirements for integration into next-generation mass volume mobile devices. Today, state-of-the-art multi-mode terminals have a limited flexibility of two or three standard modes and suffer from increased power consumption and bill-of-material cost due to lack of reuse of building blocks. IMEC realized world’s first functional silicon of a true SDR transceiver IC which can be widely programmed to operate with all present and future standards in the frequency range between the 174MHz and 6GHz. The SDR front-end is highly integrated to save cost and area. The reconfigurable radio front-end IC in 130nm technology uses only 1.2V supply voltage and has an active area of 7.7mm2. Depending on its configuration the SDR front-end has a power consumption ranging from 60 to 120mA which is comparable to a single-mode radio. At today’s International Solid State Circuit Conference, IMEC has presented the technical details of its first SCALDIO prototype chip featuring dual band operation in receive and wideband in transmit mode. Since the paper submission to ISSCC, IMEC has developed and measured a second generation prototype now covering full 174MHz to 6GHz wideband operation both in receive and transmit mode, and also including an ultra-flexible transmit section. Hereby, SCALDIO is applicable for products supporting multiple wireless standards such as broadcasting (DAB/DVB), cellular, WLAN etc. and has unique features for upcoming cost-efficient, flexible and feature-rich multi-mode terminals. The SDR transceiver front-end includes a fully reconfigurable direct-conversion receiver, transmitter and two synthesizers. The direct-conversion scheme is used to allow reconfiguration from 174MHz to 6GHz. The performance of each block can be digitally adjusted over a wide range of specifications through a novel type of analog network-on-chip. Using these different configuration "knobs", the overall front-end performance (RF carrier frequency, channel bandwidth, noise figure, linearity, filter characteristic, etc.) and power can be tuned to the specific requirements of the different standards to be covered. Moreover, there is an equally important perspective of energy optimization. Using the same reconfiguration knobs, the front-end can significantly reduce its power consumption by exploiting real-time power/performance trade-off opportunities when allowed by the conditions of the environment, e.g. by reducing the filtering level when the interferer level is lower than the worst case defined by the standard. New mixed-signal control, calibration and compensation techniques are used to relax the specifications in the analog domain and hence to lower cost and lower risk of analog circuit design. IMEC has fully measured and verified the SCALDIO radio. Several patents have been filed for circuit-level breakthroughs. The technology is now ready for transfer to the industry for use in upcoming mobile solutions. _______________________________________________ Discuss-gnuradio mailing list Discuss-gnuradio@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss-gnuradio