System-defined design and performance of RFICs for W-CDMA mobile radio terminals

Abstract

Third generation wideband CDMA (W-CDMA) systems like UMTS will add broadband data to support video, Intemet access, and other high speed services for untethered devices. They are currently deployed in Japan and will be introduced in Europe in 2002. Despite sufficient RF performance has been assumed in the standardization bodies, especially in mobile devices the RF part is still a limiting factor for the overall system characteristics. Only an integral design approach including both RF and baseband functionalities makes it possible to achieve analog front-ends with sufficient performance. This paper reviews transceiver architectures with respect to W-CDMA and presents some of the recent silicon-based radio frequency integrated circuits for mobile terminals.