A CMOS Burst-Mode Transmitter With Watt-Level RF PA and Flexible Fully Digital Front-End

Abstract

A fully digital burst-mode handheld transmitter with power amplifier for the 900-MHz band is presented. The transmitter front-end consists of a digital polar modulator which uses pulse width modulation (PWM) for the amplitude modulator. Phase modulation (PM) is implemented by shifting the carrier in time. Both the PWM and the PM are implemented using asynchronous delay lines which allow time resolutions down to 10 ps without the need for high-frequency clock signals. The modulated signal is amplified by a Class B amplifier which uses power combining to reach watt-level output power. The transmitter is implemented in standard CMOS technology. When transmitting a modulated signal with a peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) of 10.3 dB and 5-MHz bandwidth, the burst-mode transmitter meets the stringent error-vector-magnitude (EVM) specifications of 5.6% at 23.1-dBm average output power with 11.7% power added efficiency (PAE).