Software Radio: the Devil wears Analog

The multimedia convergence in mobile phones is calling for new RF architectures. The Software Radio concept is claimed to be a solution toward low power, low cost reconfigurable systems. It is characterized by a one chip solution, able to handle any RF standards. It receives any RF signals in a 0 to 5GHz frequency range. Such a solution is nowadays a dream in the case of handsets. Huge technological constraints remain on Analog to Digital Conversion which has to be brought closer and closer to the antenna. As technical bottlenecks are expected to be unsolved in the next 15 years, disruptive RF receiver architectures are found to address the Software Radio concept. Analog signal processing is one of the clues of this issue but is more than a challenge to be implemented. This presentation will give an overview of RF Integrated Circuit design and will detail the design of the very first Software Radio receiver based on analog signal processing