A Novel Fully Synthesizable All-Digital RF Transmitter for IoT Applications

Yilei Li, Kirti Dhwaj, Chien-Heng Wong, Yuan Du, Li Du, Yiwu Tang, Yiyu Shi, Tatsuo Itoh, Mau-Chung Frank Chang

Abstract: In this paper, a fully synthesizable all-digital transmitter (ADTX) is first proposed. This transmitter (TX) uses Cartesian architecture and supports wide-band quadratic-amplitude modulation with wide carrier frequency range. Furthermore, the design methodology for ADTX and corresponding bandpass filter is discussed. This TX is synthesized with digital register transfer level-graphic database system flow, and can be easily implemented in any standard CMOS technology. An exemplary TX is synthesized by TSMC 28-nm standard cell library with extremely small area (0.0009 mm 2 ) and supports carrier frequency as high as 6 GHz with excellent error vector magnitude (<;-30 dB). To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first work on a fully synthesizable design of RF transistors, allowing easy technology migration and portability.