A new approach to reduce the resolution requirement of the ADC for high data rate wireless receivers

The recent 60GHz mm-wave technology opens a new era for multi-gigabit wireless communication systems. This enables the transmission of Gigabit-per-second applications like applications for transmission of uncompressed high definition video. However, 60GHz mm-wave technology faces a critical challenge of designing high-speed, high-precision Analog-to-Digital Converter (ADC) which is either hard to design or power hungry. In this paper, a mixed-signal equalizer is proposed for high data rate wireless receivers. By using a mixed-signal processing method, the proposed structure reduces the resolution requirement of the ADCs by nearly two-bits at the expense of introducing a high-speed, high-precision Digital-to-Analog Converter (DAC). Further optimizations are conducted to the proposed structure to reduce the resolution of the DAC while maintain the performance of the receiver.