Transmitter cost/efficiency exploration for 5-GHz WLAN

Wireless LAN systems target wireless communications for demanding multimedia applications in several types of environments. While meeting many transmitter and receiver specifications, designing a low-cost, efficient and portable system covering this whole design space becomes infeasible. Therefore we developed a methodology that translates this multitude of requirements into a system covering a part of the design space, but still attractive from an application point of view and with an optimal performance/cost-ratio. As a result, we show that there is only a limited set of applications that can be covered by a 5-GHz wireless LAN mobile terminal with 16 dBm average output power. Instead a mobile terminal with 23 dBm average output power can work in more scenarios. Further we show that implementing a more efficient power amplifier architecture has limited impact on the system efficiency in the 16-dBm system-on-chip (SoC) case, however this becomes crucial for integration of a 23-dBm mobile terminal using a system-in-a-package (SiP) approach.