Wireless Transceiver Architecture: Bridging RF and Digital Communications

Many books exist which concentrate on the physical implementation of the RF/analogue part of transceivers, such as the CMOS design, or on the digital signal processing required in the digital communication area. However, there is little material dedicated to the transceiver architecture and system design itself. Similarly, much of the existing literature focuses on the concepts useful for the dimensioning, but without much practical information on how to proceed (as would be required to start a project from scratch, as required by a beginner) and on the reasons for proceeding that way. This book redresses the balance. In it the author explains the why and the how about the architecture of transceivers and their dimensioning from the perspective of a RFIC architect, from within industry itself.The first part looks at what is expected from a transceiver. The goal is to derive the minimum set of signal processing functions to be embedded in the system as well as the system constraints to be considered/fulfilled. Practically speaking, this part is composed of 3 chapters dedicated to digital communication theory, electromagnetism theory, and wireless networks organization through the coexistence with other users. The second part of the book considers the limitations of the physical implementation, using electronic devices, of the set of functions derived in the first part of the book. Those limitations have been sorted in 3 groups leading to 3 chapters dedicated to noise, nonlinearity and RF Impairments.The third part of the book is fully dedicated to the transceiver system design and architecture in itself. The author explains how to dimension a transceiver that fulfils the requirements derived in the first part of the book whilst taking into account the implementation limitations reviewed in the second part. It also leads to 3 chapters dedicated to budgeting a transceiver, transceivers architectures, and algorithms for transceivers: i.e. how the use of dedicated algorithms can also help to overcome some limitations in given architectures. By the end of book the reader will be able to understand simple formulations, and results that can be used easily in a spread sheet tool to perform transceiver budgets. These derivations allow a deep understanding of the mechanisms in action in real physical implementations. The idea is that the reader can gain a good enough understanding of the problems encountered in practical situations in order to react correctly, providing a real understanding of the impact of each contributor to the overall degradation of the signal.