Sharing RF intellectual property helps overcome integration challenges in a CDMA handset

The development of the high frequency portion of wireless communication equipment, such as mobile phones or base stations, is currently articulated in two main areas: the design of the RFICs and their integration with the remaining discrete parts on the Printed Circuit Board (PCB). This paper discusses how the use of encoding techniques for sharing circuit-level RF Intellectual Property (IP) allows a much tighter interaction between the RFIC vendor and the manufacturer of the wireless communication system, and allows early integration of the RFIC. A real life example of the combined application of encoded TP and state-of-the-art RF simulation to the integration of an RFIC in an IS-95 handset is presented.