Wireless systems-on-a-chip design

There is a fundamental shift that is occurring in the implementation of wireless systems. Not only is the underlying technology shifting to mainstream CMOS technology, but the applications and specifications of the supported links is also rapidly evolving. These two trends result in radical shifts in the radio system architectures, which ranges from the implementation issues associated with the analog RF circuitry and the digital baseband processing to the basic techniques for dealing with multi-access and the impairments of the channel. All of these design issues are driven by an ever-widening range of requirements from the high bandwidth needs of multimedia Internet access to the ultra low power needs of sensor data networks. The multiple inter-related technologies required for implementation of such wireless system requires a co-design strategy in communication algorithms, protocols, digital architectures as well the analog and digital circuits required for their implementation. A design infrastructure which achieves this is described, which has a particular emphasis on methods for high level specification and estimation, that provides a fully automated chip design flow.