Intel Debuts CMOS WLAN Transceiver

(Top News, 13 Jul 2005)

Intel has developed a prototype of an all-CMOS direct conversion dual-band radio transceiver capable of supporting every current Wi-Fi standard, 802.11a, b and g, as well as the emerging n standard.

Intel presented the system-in-a-package technology as part of a technical paper delivered at the Symposium on VLSI Technology in Kyoto, Japan this week.

The 1.4-volt device in the research paper integrates a 5GHz CMOS power amplifier that meets all the spectral purity and non-interference requirements from the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Intel said. Frequency planning techniques minimize interference caused by the on-die amplifier, the company said.

Intel researchers developed a new calibration scheme for the transceiver to achieve high volume manufacturability, the company said. Separating receiver and transmitter effects has proven to be difficult in the past, but Intel's scheme is easy to implement and correctly separates the effects, improving yields and lowering the cost of these radios, the chipmaker claimed.

"This system-in-a-package design uses more low-voltage circuitry than we've ever used in the past, which means we can integrate it and make it lower cost while operating at lower voltages and providing longer battery life," Krishnamurthy Soumyanath, director of Intel's Communications Circuits Research Lab, said in a statement. "The variable bandwidth of this solution extends capabilities beyond today's 20MHz to 100MHz, and is expected to support data rates higher than 100 megabits per second that should allow people to enjoy multiple high-quality video streams concurrently."

Intel said its research points toward a time in the future when a wireless device will use smart antenna systems and a reconfigurable CMOS radio on a single device, making the radio more power efficient, smaller and lower cost. The goal being pursued is the ability to connect to any network, anytime, anywhere on any device, Intel said. One of the key achievements of this research is keeping the underlying manufacturing technology tied to CMOS, Intel said. By doing so, it keeps manufacturing costs low and the potential to produce this capability in high volume, the company suggested.

"By creating this capability in CMOS, Intel will have the option of integrating wireless capabilities into a wide variety of our future chips," Soumyanath said.