A System Level Energy Model and Energy-Quality Evaluation for Integrated Transceiver Front-Ends

• Published in: IEEE transactions on very large scale integration (VLSI) systems Vol. 15; no. 1; pp. 90 - 103
• Main Authors: Ye Li, Bakkaloglu, B., Chakrabarti, C.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Piscataway, NJ IEEE 01.01.2007; Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Applied sciences; Circuit properties; CMOS technology; Code Division Multiple Access; Communication systems; Constellation diagram; Design. Technologies. Operation analysis. Testing; Digital; Electric, optical and optoelectronic circuits; Electronic circuits; Electronic equipment and fabrication. Passive components, printed wiring boards, connectics; Electronics; Energy consumption; energy model; Energy-efficient; Exact sciences and technology; Filters; Integrated circuits; Mathematical models; Peak to average power ratio; peak-to-mean ratio (PAR); Power consumption; Power system modeling; pulse shaping roll-off factor; Radio frequencies; Radio frequency; RF front-end; Semiconductor electronics. Microelectronics. Optoelectronics. Solid state devices; Signal convertors; Symbols; Transceivers; Voltage; Wireless communication; Wireless communications; State of the art; RF front-end; peak-to-mean ratio (PAR); Direct convertor; Receiver; pulse shaping roll-off factor; Power supply; 1/f noise; Energy-efficient; Frequency effect; Transceiver; Signal interference; Power consumption; Complementary MOS technology; Code division multiple access; Intermediate frequency; energy model; Miniaturization; Data communication; Low-power electronics; Radio communication
• ISSN: 1063-8210; 1557-9999
• DOI: 10.1109/TVLSI.2007.891095

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