Leti and Agilent Present Results on Millimeter-Wave Short-Range Communication Integrated Systems

The achievement, a low-power monolithic millimeter-wave short-range and high-data-rate communication system, was made possible thanks to the CEA-Leti’s 10 years of experience in ultra-wideband and high-frequency links. To be converted into a functional and market-ready integrated system, this original communication technology also requires specific design methodologies. Leti’s solution, which supposes efficient analysis of closely related active, passive and radiation phenomena, was developed with Agilent’s coherent design flow.



“With on-chip high-gain integrated antennas, a real co-design between the receiver/transmitter circuits and the antennas is necessary for a global optimization of the system’s performances,” said Leti researcher Laurent Dussopt.



“Finding the best trade-off between transmission range and battery life is critical in low-power applications. Since Agilent’s Advanced Design System and EMPro share the same database, a seamless co-design between circuit simulations and the full 3D finite element method provides an advantage over classical methods to determine the optimum operating conditions,” said Marc Petersen, product manager, EM & Electro-Thermal Solutions at Agilent.



Leti developed a packaged 60GHz low-power transceiver, with integrated antennas on high-resistive CMOS SOI 65nm process from STMicroelectronics, for short-range communication. The transceiver uses an on-off keying UWB pulse modulation and delivers 2.2Gbit/s with less than 100mW in the range of 10cm. This component, which has potential use in hand-held multimedia applications, will be presented at the Leti-Agilent session on Jan. 23, during the IEEE SiRF conference.