Electrical engineers develop ‘beyond 5G’ wireless transceiver
A new wireless transceiver invented by electrical engineers at the University of California, Irvine boosts radio frequencies into 100-gigahertz territory, quadruple the speed of the upcoming 5G, or fifth-generation, wireless communications standard.
Labeled an “end-to-end transmitter-receiver” by its creators in UCI’s Nanoscale Communication Integrated Circuits Labs, the 4.4-millimeter-square silicon chip is capable of processing digital signals significantly faster and more energy-efficiently because of its unique digital-analog architecture. The team’s innovation is outlined in a paper published recently in the IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits.
His group’s answer is in the form of a new transceiver that leapfrogs over the 5G wireless standard — designated to operate within the range of 28 to 38 gigahertz — into the 6G standard, which is expected to work at 100 gigahertz and above.
Having transmitters and receivers that can handle such high-frequency data communications is going to be vital in ushering in a new wireless era dominated by the “internet of things,” autonomous vehicles, and vastly expanded broadband for streaming of high-definition video content and more.
While this digital dream has driven technology developers for decades, stumbling blocks have begun to appear on the road to progress. According to Heydari, changing frequencies of signals through modulation and demodulation in transceivers has traditionally been done via digital processing, but integrated circuit engineers have in recent years begun to see the physical limitations of this method.
To get around this problem, NCIC Labs researchers utilized a chip architecture that significantly relaxes digital processing requirements by modulating the digital bits in the analog and radio-frequency domains.
Heydari said that in addition to enabling the transmission of signals in the range of 100 gigahertz, the transceiver’s unique layout allows it to consume considerably less energy than current systems at a reduced overall cost, paving the way for widespread adoption in the consumer electronics market.
Reference: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/07/190716073729.htm
Junoh Kim 