A 4.5mW digital baseband receiver for level-A evolved EDGE

Recent popularity of smart phones and other mobile broadband devices has given fresh impetus to 3G technology and beyond, which provides a key enabler to the mobile industry's only current growth sector. Despite the high data rates of 3G-enabled devices, good user experience still crucially depends on the availability of a fallback mode such as the GSM/EDGE network. While EDGE provides a respectable substitute where 3G is absent, enhancement is desirable both to lessen the disparity between HSPA and legacy EDGE and to improve 2G-only service in regions where upgrade to 3G is not imminent. Evolved EDGE (E-EDGE) is a recent standard [1] that aims to quintuple the EDGE rate to 1.2Mb/s by phasing in a set of extra technical features, including 32QAM and turbo coding. This contribution explores the challenges posed by higher order modulation and describes an efficient digital receiver that preserves the low-cost/low-power attributes of EDGE-enabled devices.