A system level energy model and energy-quality evaluation for integrated transceiver front-ends

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129 Scopus citations

Abstract

As CMOS technology scales down, digital supply voltage and digital power consumption goes down. However, the supply voltage and power consumption of the RF front-end and analog sections do not scale in a similar fashion. In fact, in many state-of-the-art communication transceivers, RF and analog sections can consume more energy compared to the digital part. In this paper, first, a system level energy model for all the components in the RF and analog front-end is presented. Next, the RF and analog front-end energy consumption and communication quality of three representative systems are analyzed: a single user point-to-point wireless data communication system, a multi-user code division multiple access (CDMA)-based system and a receive-only video distribution system. For the single user system, the effect of occupied signal bandwidth, peak-to-average ratio (PAR), symbol rate, constellation size, and pulse-shaping filter roll-off factor is analyzed; for the CDMA-based multi-user system, the effect of the number of users in the cell and multiple access interference (MAI) along with the PAR and filter roll-off factor is studied; for the receive-only system, the effect of 1/f noise for direct-conversion receiver and the effect of IF frequency for low-IF architecture on the RF front-end power consumption is analyzed. For a given communication quality specification, it is shown that the energy consumption of a wireless communication front-end can be scaled down by adjusting parameters such as the pulse shaping filter roll-off factor, constellation size, symbol rate, number of users in the cell, and signal center frequency.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)90-102
Number of pages13
JournalIEEE Transactions on Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) Systems
Volume15
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - Jan 2007

Keywords

  • Energy model
  • Energy-efficient
  • Peak-to-mean ratio (PAR)
  • Pulse shaping roll-off factor
  • RF front-end

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Software
  • Hardware and Architecture
  • Electrical and Electronic Engineering

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