A 680MHz to 4GHz 4RX-1TX SoC for cognitive radio applications

As wireless technology continues to grow, new intelligent systems will be needed to help organize, manage, and interact with the surrounding RF environment. Such systems are based on a cognitive radio, where a device can learn and adapt to its RF environment. Motion detection, cybersecurity and spectrum sharing are few examples of such applications. However, for widespread adoption of such systems to be feasible, they must be small, cost-effective, maintainable, and offer high performance with low power consumption. Presented in this paper is a fully integrated cognitive radio platform, capable of RX/TX functionality from 680MHz to 4GHz. The platform is based on a custom SoC (40nm CMOS), which combines a wideband transceiver with a highly-accelerated digital vector processor and microprocessor for realtime signal analysis and application execution. Companion to the SoC are up to 16 specialized front-end ASICs (180nm SiGe) used for gain and band selection. Owing to the high level of integration and programmability, this platform is a cost-effective solution for any cognitive radio application.