Integrated Circuit Techniques and Architectures for Beam-Forming Radio Transmitters

Radio transmission can be made directive by utilizing an antenna array instead of a single antenna. As a result, the efficiency is greatly improved since then a larger share of the transmitted power is radiated in the direction of the receiver. Furthermore, the interference to other receivers is kept low since only little power is radiated towards them. Obviously a receiver will also benefit from an antenna array in the same way. However, since most of the power in a wireless communication is consumed by the transmitter, the main focus in this project is on that. In order to be useful in a generic case, the direction of the antenna beam must be programmable. This can be achieved by changing the phasing of the different antennas. There are several ways of accomplishing this. However, in a mass consumer product the additional cost should remain low. The main goal of this project is the development of a beam-forming transmitter architecture and realization in a CMOS integrated circuit process with a minimal component overhead. A high level of integration is expected to help in achieving this goal.