Single-Chip Radio

At the School of Electrical & Electronic Engineering, the Micro Radio Group is developing a single-chip radio using complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) and low-temperature co-fired ceramic (LTCC) process for low-cast, high-speed, and short-range wireless communications. A novel full differential radio architecture has been proposed for the single-chip radio using antenna-in-package (AiP) technology in LTCC process. A heat spreader inside an IC package has been used as an antenna. The antenna has two feeds which can be easily configured for operations of either single-ended or differential signals. This breakthrough in antenna technology received prominent coverage in the industry’s leading magazine, Antenna Systems and Technology. In its work on design of Radio Frequency Integrated Circuits (RFICs) in silicon technology for the single-chip radio, the group has also successfully developed the world’s first differential transmit/receive switch in CMOS (see Figure below) which is a key building block for the ultimate realisation of the single-chip radio. The research work on single-chip radio, recognised as the most elegant antenna solution for single-chip radios, in particular the differential AiP, has attracted much interest from industry and academia including IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center for single-chip millimeter-wave radio; Motorola Mobile Device Chief Technology Office for single-chip multi-band radio; IME, Singapore for single-chip ultra-wide band radio; and Ansoft for antenna-package-chip co-design methodology.