Performance evaluation of a single chip radio transceiver

A radio transceiver encompassing a single conversion receiver and a direct conversion transmitter has been fabricated on a single integrated circuit (IC). The architecture of the chip (fabricated in a 0.5 μm BiCMOS process) is optimized for use in the Digital European Cordless Telecommunications (DECT) standard. A description of the block diagram of the chip is given. In addition, the performance of the transceiver in terms of noise figure, overall sensitivity, and bit error rate (BER) is presented. A complete radio design using the single chip transceiver is done, and demonstrates that the high level of integration reduces the component count and board size. The performance of the chip and the radio design is compared to the earlier generation to emphasize the improvements. The performance of the earlier generation radio has been documented by Fague, Dao, Karmel, and Madsen (see Proceedings of the IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference, Stockholm, Sweden, p.512, 1994). In the previous generation radio, separate ICs were fabricated for the various radio functions. The new IC combines these four ICs onto a single chip. In addition, several functions that were discrete designs on the radio board are also integrated onto the single chip transceiver. The resulting IC provides the opportunity for highly compact radio designs which contribute to smaller, lighter personal communications equipment