Circuits

Low-Power RF LO-free Receivers for 5G/6G, WiFi 6/7, and IoT Applications

Principal Investigator
Project Description

RF LO generation is starting to become a real power consumption bottleneck in high-performance 5G/WiFi systems that are pushing 1024- and 4096-QAM. Surprisingly, the power consumption of RF LO generation is also dominating lower-power applications like NB-IoT due to strict reciprocal mixing specifications resulting from operation in congested spectral environments. As signal complexity continues to increase and as the number of (large) interferers continues to worsen, this problem will not get easier. This project aims to develop new radio architectures that do not require an RF LO to demodulate, towards lower power implementations for next-generation systems.