SAW-less Transceiver for 4G/3G/2G Cellular Standards

A single-chip multi-mode multi-band CMOS transceiver was designed and implemented for the 4G mobile platform. The transceiver supports both Long Term Evolution (LTE) frequency division duplexing (FDD) and time division duplexing (TDD) operation modes. It also supports 3G Wideband Code Division Multiple Access (W-CDMA) and 2G global system for mobile communication (GSM)/enhanced general packet radio service (EGPRS) operation with the same signal paths. The hardware supports FDD bands 1-21, TDD bands 33-40, W-CDMA bands I-VI and VIII-XI, and EGPRS bands Cel1850, EGSM, DCS and PCS. The receiver has 9 primary and 5 diversity input ports that do not require external low-noise amplifiers (LNAs) or interstage surface acoustic wave (SAW) filters. The automatic gain control system is fully autonomous. The transmitter has 8 output ports that do not require interstage SAW filters. An integrated transmit predistortion path reduces the impact of offset modulations. An integrated ARM7 core controls transceiver sequencing and enables a high-level application programming interface (API) that greatly reduces radio development time. Two industry standard digital interfaces provide compatibility to LTE basebands as well as 2G/3G basebands. It is fabricated in 90 nm CMOS.