With the proliferation of wireless networks, there is a need for more compact, low-cost, power efficient transmitters that are capable of supporting the various communication standards, including Bluetooth, WLAN, GSM/EDGE, WCDMA and 4G of 3GPP cellular. This book describes a novel idea of RF digital-to-analog converters (RFDAC) and demonstrates how they can realize all-digital, fully-integrated RF transmitters that support all the current multi-mode and multi-band communication standards. With this book the reader will: Understand the challenges of realizing a universal CMOS RF transmitter. Recognize the design issues and the advantages and disadvantages related to analog and digital transmitter architectures. Master designing an RF transmitter from system level modeling techniques down to circuit designs and their related layout know-hows. Grasp digital polar and I/Q calibration techniques as well as the digital predistortion approaches. Learn how to generate appropriate digital I/Q baseband signals in order to apply them to the test chip and measure the RF-DAC performance. Highlights the benefits and implementation challenges of software-defined transmitters using CMOS technology. Includes various types of analog and digital RF transmitter architectures for wireless applications. Presents an all-digital polar RFDAC transmitter architecture and describes in detail its implementation. Presents a new all-digital I/Q RFDAC transmitter architecture and its implementation. Provides comprehensive design techniques from system level to circuit level. Introduces several digital predistortion techniques which can be used in RF transmitters. Describes the entire flow of system modeling, circuit simulation, layout techniques and the measurement process.

A programmable self-characterization technique is presented, whose purpose is to determine the extent of mismatches present in a variable-capacitor (varactor) array as part of an LC tank of a digitally controlled oscillator (DCO). The varactor array represents a digital-to-analog conversion function, such that mismatches in it cause distortion in the DCO's digital frequency tracking and modulation. The presented technique, relying exclusively on internal resources in the system-on-chip (SoC) and on dedicated software, is implemented in a 65nm CMOS Digital RF Processor (DRP) based transceiver, and demonstrates sufficient accuracy to allow relatively quick measurements of mismatches of a few percent.