Energy-efficient wireless transmitter architecture for mobile multimedia

Abstract

The continued improvement of transistor performance has increased the limit on the peak energy-efficiency of wireless transmitters. Nevertheless, the average efficiency with mobile multimedia communication is decreasing due to escalating design requirements on linearity and bandwidth. Therefore there is an increasing gap between the peak and average efficiency. Furthermore, the nature of user mobility mandates reliability over environmental changes and device aging. To address these two pervasive issues of efficiency and reliability, we pursue solutions at both the architectural and algorithmic level. This thesis proposes energy-efficient wireless transmitter architectures that also improve transmitter reliability. First, mobile adaptive predistortion to improve transmitter reliability is presented. Second, parallel segmented modulation (PSM) to improve average efficiency is introduced. A prototype PSM transmitter chip for gigabit Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11ac VHT160 standard) is designed, which integrates a watt-level switching RF power amplifier and a subsampling observation receiver for low-power adaptive predistortion.