Power Efficiency in 5G Front Ends

Moderator: Francesco Carobolante, IoTissimo

April 20th, 2019

San Diego

SUMMIT San Diego 2019

Navid Ehsan, Intel • Develops converged mobility and SoC

power architectures at Intel.

• For eight years at Qualcomm, where he led the LTE power optimization efforts over several generations of modems and was also the power lead for the first 5G chipset.

• Prior experience at Nextwave where he worked on WiMAX MAC layer design.

• Navid holds 16 granted patents and is author/co-author of about 20 journal and conference papers.

SUMMIT San Diego 2019

Mike Kappes, IQ-Analog • Mike Kappes is an entrepreneur,

engineer, and inventor in the semiconductor industry.

• First developed CMOS transceivers for wireline(ADSL) and then data converter technology for 802.11 at Broadcom.

• In 2004 Mike founded IQ-Analog, which focuses on high speed data converter technology based on temporal-domain signal processing.

SUMMIT San Diego 2019

Reza Rofougaran, Movandi• A pioneer, engineering executive,

inventor and entrepreneur, he led the integration of the RF radio with digital processors to enable short range wireless connectivity.

• He founded Innovent Systems in 1998, which merged with Broadcom in 2000. At Broadcom he pioneered the integration of multiple wireless systems into single chip.

• He recently founded Movandi with a mission to revolutionize 5G everywhere.

• He is one of the top ten patent holders in U.S. and top thirty patent holders in the world.

SUMMIT San Diego 2019

Aristotele Hadjichristos, Global Foundries

• Aristotele Hadjichristos is an hands-on leader in all aspects of RFIC and RF Front-End mobile products R&D.

• He is Sr. Director of Design with Global Foundries, responsible for RF and mmWave reference designs.

• At NXP, he developed mobile power and mixed signal products for top tier mobile OEMs.

• At Qualcomm he led the RFIC design team and delivered two generations of CMOS 3G and 4G cellular transceiver products that shipped more than 2B units. He also led Qualcomm RF Front-End.

• At Ericsson Mobile Platforms he led the development of the E150 Edge RF platform, the first to use polar modulation in handsets.

• He holds more than 150 patents and has authored several IEEE papers.

SUMMIT San Diego 2019

Naveen Yanduru, IDT • Dr. Naveen Yanduru started the San Diego

site for IDT and currently leads the RF Engineering department.

• He has over 20 years of experience of managing product design and research in the field of RF, Microwave and mmWave RF front ends and transceivers.

• Prior to joining IDT, Naveen has held various technical and management positions at Texas Instruments, Samsung, Peregrine Semiconductor and Qualcomm.

• Naveen authored 15 US Patents, 25 IEEE publications and served as Distinguished Lecturer for IEEE.

SUMMIT San Diego 2019

“Smart Silicon” 5G Front Ends for Wireless Infrastructure

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Naveen Yanduru

Dual Channel RF Front End for Sub 6GHz 5G

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• Smart Silicon to enhance the performance of GaN Doherty performance

• Smart Silicon features to provide flexibility, control, compensations/calibration, protection mechanisms and system optimization for performance and power.

RX OUT2 +

RX OUT2 -

TX OUT1ARX OUT1 +

RX OUT1 -

RX

IN1

+

RX

IN1

-

RX

IN2

+

RX

IN2-

BIAS OUTD

BIAS OUTC

BIAS OUTB

BIAS OUTA

RX

IN2

RX

IN1

TX OUT1B

TX OUT2A

TX OUT2B

DIRECT I/O

SERIAL I/O

DVDD

TRANSCEIVER

TX OUT2+

TX OUT2-

TX IN2+

TX IN2-

TX OUT1+

TX OUT1-

TX IN1+

TX IN1-

VD

DV

DD

VDD

VDD

TRX_SW_CTRL1

TRX_SW_CTRL2

VDD

VDD

TransceiverTRX Front

End45dBm Psat

GaN PAs

Modular Beam Former IC Front End for mmWave 5G

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• Symmetric, repeatable, thermally efficient unit cell with minimal antenna routing and distributed thermal.

• Up/down converter and mmWave filters can be optimized in any technology.

• Smart Silicon features for low calibration overhead with embedded memory for fast beam steering.

Up/DownConverterBF

BF BF

BF

SPI

SD

IS

DO

CS

BS

CL

KE

NF

SW

RF1

RF2

RF3

RF4

RF8

RF7

RF6

RF5

V C H

MemoryDet

Det

Det

Det

Det

Det

Det

Det

16 element dual polarized antenna example 8 Channel Beamformer IC with 16dBm Psat

Direct Conversion Instead for 5G mmWave?

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• RX: Filtering requirements mitigated. (No Image filtering, no half IF issue, less mixing products and blockers can be rejected in baseband low pass filter). ADC FoM less challenging compared to direct sampling at IF.

• TX: LO leakage is not a spurious issue! Less mixing products, RF filtering is relaxed, DAC FoM less challenging compared to direct sampling at IF.