Tutorial: Wireless Transceiver System Design for Modern Communication Standards

Defining the architecture and deriving specifications for modern wireless communication radio transceivers is a cross-domain task that requires understanding of digital communications, signal processing, radio architectures, analog/RF circuit design, discrete PCB system design, IC process and real-world product experience. This tutorial introduces the basic terminology used, such as NF, IIP2, IIP3, and provides an overview of the architecture selection and specification derivation procedure using state-of-the-art examples such as 3G/LTE cellular, 802.11ad and others. Starting from regulatory and communication standard document requirements such as sensitivity, blocking, spectral mask, EVM, etc., and taking into account different transceiver topologies, detailed transceiver specifications such as gain NF, IIP2, IIP3, cross-modulation, phase noise, filtering profile, I/Q mismatch, ADC resolution are derived and mapped onto circuit blocks. This is done by using both analytical calculations and simulation results, while the various transceiver performance degradation mechanisms are explained.