NEC and NEC Electronics Successfully Develop Reconfigurable Analog Baseband LSI for Software Defined Radio

NEC and NEC Electronics Successfully Develop Reconfigurable Analog Baseband LSI for Software Defined Radio

NEC announced the successful development of a reconfigurable analog baseband LSI for Software Defined Radio (SDR).

The newly developed LSI is capable of filtering unnecessary signals in the frequency range of 400 KHz to 30 MHz, allowing it to simultaneously support multiple wireless standards for existing and future mobile system standards such as mobile phone, broadcasting, and wireless LAN systems. Boasting a small chip area of 0.57mm2, the LSI can also change the type of filter depending on the wireless standard.

Conventionally, it has been difficult to incorporate SDR into mobile equipment since the existing SDR technology relied upon selective switching of transceiver devices, which resulted in a large mounting area of existing chips for each wireless standard. One of the key building blocks for the novel SDR transceivers is an analog baseband that includes tunable filters. The new slim, compact analog baseband LSI has been achieved by development of a pulse-width controlled reconfigurable filter for changing filter type and/or bandwidth.

Features of the new LSI

1. Responds to tuned transmissions and rejects other signals within a broad bandwidth range of 400 KHz to 30 MHz, allowing support of mobile, WLAN, WPAN, broadcasting and GPS standards.
2. Realizes reconfigurability to enable several filter types, including Butterworth, Chebyshev, and Elliptic. All of the filter types are achieved by a simple change in the pulse width of the control signal, realizing a small chip area of 0.57mm2.