A digital 80 Mb/s OFDM transceiver IC for wireless LAN in the 5 GHz band

Emerging standards for broadband wireless LANs (WLANs) such as IEEE802.11a, Hiperlan-II and MMAC require orthogonal frequency division multiplex (OFDM) modulation for the physical layer (PHY) interface. OFDM modems were previously realized in the context of very high speed digital subscriber lines (VDSL) and digital audio broadcast (DAB). However, the WLAN application puts different constraints on the OFDM transceiver presented here because the terminals are portable. Therefore, an adaptive frequency domain equalizer is integrated to mitigate the variations of the indoor wireless channel. Fast programmable on-chip acquisition hardware supports burst mode communications.