High-Efficiency Wireless Transmitters Employing RF Pulse-Width Modulation

采用射频脉宽调制的高效无线发射器

• 批准号: 1509615
• 负责人: Ranjit Gharpurey
• 金额: $ 29.5万
• 依托单位: University of Texas at Austin
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2015
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2015-09-01 至 2020-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1509615&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Efficiency; Wireless; Transmitters; Employing; RF

High-Efficiency Wireless Transmitters Employing RF Pulse-Width ModulationRanjit GharpureyThe growth in infrastructure for wireless systems such as cellular telephony and wireless local area networks (WLAN), and the widespread availability of communication devices, has had a profound impact on multiple aspects of modern life over the recent decades. Examples of this include commerce, entertainment, healthcare, navigation, safety and security, social-media, transportation and workspace productivity, in addition to basic person-to-person communication. In the foreseeable future, the emergence of applications driven by the "internet-of-things", wherein a significantly larger number of devices, such as household and industrial appliances, will require wireless connectivity, will place even greater demands on the wireless infrastructure. Power efficiency of communication links, and compatibility with technologies such as advanced semiconductor processes that enable miniaturization and low-cost deployment, will be critical to future proliferation of wireless systems. Efficiency is important in both mobile and stationary devices for minimizing energy wastage. With potentially billions of wireless communication devices being deployed over the coming years, the need for efficient operation is in fact, fundamental. Power efficiency is also critical in mobile devices since it directly impacts the available operating time of the device. The proposed research will investigate design techniques for significantly enhancing the efficiency of wireless communication transmitters through innovative architectures that leverage advanced Complementary Metal "Oxide" Semiconductor (CMOS) processes. The research will also include an investigation of transmitter architectures that can be easily reconfigured to operate in different end environments, and on techniques that reduce the spurious interference generated by transmitters, that can degrade the performance of other devices. A key part of the proposed research will be an investigation of Pulse-Width Modulation (PWM) signaling schemes, as applied to the problem of wireless transmitters. Techniques that reduce noise in the transmitter spectrum will be explored. To avoid the noise caused by quantization in the time-domain, analog-PWM techniques will be investigated. Techniques for efficient generation of PWM directly at the desired RF band without the need for frequency upconversion will be employed. This will help reduce the out-of-band spurs that can be a significant limitation in upconverted baseband PWM due to co-existence considerations. The use of phase-locked loop (PLL) based PWM generator, which allows for generation of high-speed analog PWM will be studied. The use of efficient class-D output stages to drive output loads over broad bandwidths with minimal reconfiguration will be investigated. Such transmitters can be an enabler for techniques such as channel-bonding, wherein data rates can be increased multiple-fold by combining data streams that are transmitted over multiple bands concurrently. A practical design to validate and verify the proposed circuit techniques will be implemented in a modern CMOS technology. A practical wireless system, such as 4G-LTE will be employed for this investigation. The work will form the core of the doctoral research of one graduate student researcher, who will gain expertise in theoretical, design-related and experimental aspects to the design of wireless transmitters.

采用射频脉宽调制的高效无线发射器最近几十年来，蜂窝电话和无线局域网（WLAN）等无线系统基础设施的发展以及通信设备的广泛可用性对现代生活的多个方面产生了深远的影响。这方面的例子包括商业、娱乐、医疗保健、导航、安全和安保、社交媒体、交通和工作空间生产力，以及基本的人与人之间的沟通。在可预见的未来，由“物联网”驱动的应用程序的出现，其中大量的设备，如家用和工业电器，将需要无线连接，这将对无线基础设施提出更大的要求。通信链路的功率效率，以及与先进半导体工艺等技术的兼容性，使小型化和低成本部署成为可能，将是未来无线系统扩散的关键。在移动和固定设备中，效率对于最大限度地减少能源浪费都很重要。未来几年可能会部署数十亿台无线通信设备，因此对高效操作的需求实际上是最基本的。电源效率在移动设备中也很重要，因为它直接影响设备的可用操作时间。拟议的研究将研究设计技术，通过利用先进的互补金属“氧化物”半导体（CMOS）工艺的创新架构，显著提高无线通信发射机的效率。该研究还将包括对发射器架构的调查，该架构可以轻松地重新配置以在不同的终端环境中运行，以及减少发射器产生的杂散干扰的技术，这些杂散干扰会降低其他设备的性能。提出的研究的一个关键部分将是研究脉冲宽度调制（PWM）信号方案，应用于无线发射机的问题。将探讨降低发射机频谱噪声的技术。为了避免时域量化带来的噪声，模拟pwm技术将被研究。将采用直接在所需射频频段有效产生PWM的技术，而不需要频率上变频。这将有助于减少带外杂散，由于共存的考虑，带外杂散可能是上转换基带PWM的重要限制。本文将研究基于锁相环（PLL）的PWM发生器，它可以产生高速模拟PWM。将研究如何使用高效的d类输出级，以最小的重新配置来驱动宽带上的输出负载。这种发射机可以成为诸如信道绑定等技术的推动者，其中通过组合在多个频带上同时传输的数据流，数据速率可以增加数倍。一个实际的设计来验证和验证所提出的电路技术将在现代CMOS技术中实现。此次调查将采用4G-LTE等实用的无线通信系统。这项工作将成为一名研究生研究员博士研究的核心，他将获得无线发射机设计的理论、设计相关和实验方面的专业知识。