Sub-Project: Infineon’s contribution in EASY-A project

The EASY-A project has various work packages investigating all aspects of 60 GHz communications. It is targeted to have functional demonstrators for several applications at the end of the project. As a project partner Infineon contributes mainly to frontend and antenna design activities whereas the Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB) works on system architecture specification as Infineon subcontractor.

Infineon works on circuit design, fabrication and verification of 60 GHz frontend transmitter and receiver building blocks with SiGe:C Bipolar technology. It is important to achieve adequate performance e.g. low noise, high output power and high linearity and at the same time have a high efficiency. Frontend realization requires development of many building blocks such as up- and down-converters, power amplifiers, driver amplifiers and if necessary IF (intermediate frequency) amplifiers, low noise amplifiers (LNA), high frequency oscillators, frequency dividers, 90° phase shifters, high frequency filters. The targeted 60 GHz applications need basically lowest possible current consumption because the system efficiency is a key parameter for mobile communications. This necessitates a very careful circuit design because the operation frequency is about one third of the transit frequency for the used technology. The usage of linear modulation schemes is another reason of reduction in achievable efficiency for 60 GHz applications.

Antennas become smaller and smaller for high frequency applications and thus make antenna integration on silicon a viable solution. This is possible for 60 GHz applications due to the very small wave length. Infineon plans to work on antennas integrated in silicon for 57-64 GHz frequency band within the EASY-A project. These antennas can be an alternative to those realized on low loss substrates (package integrated antennas for example on LTCC). Target applications at 60 GHz are mainly short range wireless communications systems. This means probably there will be no requirement of very high antenna gain compared to conventional systems communicating over a long range. Therefore antenna on silicon can be a reasonable solution for cost minimization and high system integration.

System integration, partitioning and analog-digital conversion architectures are also investigated within the EASY-A project activities. The target is the definition of the most suitable system architecture for 60 GHz applications. Integration of building blocks in a single chip is called System-on-Chip which needs only one semiconductor process technology. However, it has problems such as substrate coupling, limited isolation etc. If the chips are manufactured using different technologies and more than one are integrated in a package then it is called System-in-Package. The advantages are less coupling and independent realization of building blocks in technologies which are most suitable for them. Target maximum data rate in the EASY-A project is 10 GBps. This is only possible if a high bandwidth is utilized and normally such a wideband interface between analog frontend and digital baseband is very complicated. Therefore different analog-digital conversion architectures are going to be investigated as well in order to find a commercially applicable solution.

Infineon has a very deep know-how in high frequency techniques and mobile communications and is capable of technology development and optimization for these applications. It is targeted to investigate innovative methods within EASY-A activities in order to solve problems in 60  applications and thus achieve a fast commercialization.