A 20dBm 2.4GHz digital outphasing transmitter for WLAN application in 32nm CMOS

Integration of radios in SoCs along with digital baseband and application processors is desirable for cost and form-factor reasons. Digital processors are typically implemented in the latest CMOS process to take advantage of the increased density and performance afforded by CMOS scaling. Integration of traditional RF circuits, however, requires accurate RF and passive models that typically lag behind digital transistor models by several quarters. This makes RF integration the limiting factor for time-to-market for the whole SoC, or results in sub-optimal multiple-chip solutions. Furthermore, traditional RF circuits do not benefit from scaling as digital circuits do, e.g. due to extensive use of inductors, the ever-lowering supply voltage, etc. This work presents a digital WiFi transmitter (TX) implemented in a 32nm digital CMOS process to address these issues. An outphasing architecture allows implementation of both amplitude and phase modulation using scaling-friendly, delay-based, switching phase modulators. The integrated PA was already shown to be possible to design with no RF models [1]; known issues of outphasing PA design (e.g. output impedance modulation, linearity, efficiency) are also addressed in [1]. The phase modulator uses an open-loop architecture to accommodate OFDM bandwidths up to 40MHz. The TX achieves state-of-the-art performance already in 32nm and is moreover expected to: (1) improve with scaling and (2) port easily over successive process nodes.