A programmable RFSoC in 16nm FinFET technology for wideband communications

Abstract

In this paper, we present a Programmable SoC device with monolithically integrated RF-ADCs and RF-DACs in a 16nm FinFET process. The device includes quad ARM Cortex-53 and dual ARM Cortex-R5 processing subsystem, 750K programmable logic cells, 4000 DSP slices and 4 32Gb/s serial transceivers. Each 14-bit RF-DAC operates at a sample rate of up to 6.4GS/s and can directly synthesize RF carriers up to 4GHz. Each 12-bit RF-ADC operates at a sample rate of up to 4GS/s and can directly digitize RF carriers up to 4GHz. Other RF functions generally associated with analog / RF such as complex mixing and filtering have also been integrated and implemented in the digital domain (digital-RF), enabling lower system cost and power and increased flexibility.