RF transceivers collaboration

Renesas Technology is collaborating with IMEC on research into 45 nm RF transceivers targeting Gbps cognitive radios.

Renesas has joined IMEC’s software-defined radio front-end program. This research program includes reconfigurable RF solutions, high-speed/low-power analog-to-digital converters and new approaches to digitise future RF architectures.

Researchers from Renesas will closely collaborate with IMEC’s research team to build a fundamental understanding and develop robust solutions for future mobile electronics products.

In the near term, IMEC’s front-end program targets the development of a new generation of reconfigurable radios in the 45 nm digital CMOS technology.

This device will have a programmable centre frequency from 100 MHz to 6 GHz and programmable bandwidth from 100 kHz to 40 MHz covering all key communication standards, with a merit comparable to singlemode transceivers.

The research program builds on IMEC’s previous 130 nm RF transceiver results. Further evolutions of IMEC’s ADCs will be developed within this collaboration.