A 0.5-3 GHz I/Q Interleaved Direct-Digital RF Modulator with up to 320 MHz Modulation Bandwidth in 40 nm CMOS

This paper presents a wideband, 2×12 -bit I/Q interleaved direct-digital RF modulator (DDRM) realized in 40 nm CMOS technology. The proposed digital-intensive quadrature upconverter features an advanced I/Q-mapping unit cell to boost RF power, in-band linearity, and out-of-band spectral purity. The modulator provides more than 14 dBm RF peak output power. It achieves an ACLR of -52 dBc and an EVM of -40 dB when applying a 20 MHz 256 QAM signal at 2.4 GHz. When applying a 320 MHz 256 QAM signal at 2.4 GHz, the measured ACLR and EVM are better than -43 dBc and -32 dB, respectively, without applying any digital pre-distortion.