Cellular radio integration directions

In spite of the enormous increase in cellular handset complexity projected for the next few years, users will continue to demand small, sleek, light-weight, and low-cost handsets that offer similar battery life to simple voice-only phones. This challenge to include color displays, games, audio, video, cameras, Bluetooth, WLAN, and multi-mode cellular in the same form-factor and power of today´s handsets can only be met through aggressive integration of the handset electronics. This paper investigates one aspect of the integration challenge; the potential for integration of the handset radio functions in advanced BiCMOS or CMOS technology. Radio performance requirements, radio architectures, performance limitations of wafer process technology, development time, cost, and yield are investigated. Radio architectures suitable for integration are motivated and practical limitations are discussed.