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Design >> RF Design >> RFIC power consumption as a function of frequency, bandwidth and modulation
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Message started by musiige on Jan 7^th, 2011, 12:21pm

Title: RFIC power consumption as a function of frequency, bandwidth and modulation
Post by musiige on Jan 7^th, 2011, 12:21pm

Does anyone know a link that shows the effect of frequency, bandwidth
and modulation on the power consumption of the RFIC?

Title: Re: RFIC power consumption as a function of frequency, bandwidth and modulation
Post by RFICDUDE on Jan 9^th, 2011, 1:56pm

While your question is a good one, it is very difficult to answer quantitatively because there is no "simple" link between the parameters you listed.

Power consumption versus frequency is technology dependent. Faster processes tend to reduce power consumption high frequencies. At low frequencies a slow and fast technology might provide nearly equivalent performance, so the fast technology isn't necessary for lower frequency applications.

Bandwidth has a similar relation because most integrated filters use feedback circuits with op-amps whose bandwidth depends on the technology.

Modulation most clearly impacts power consumption when amplitude modulation is used. Amplitude modulation requires circuits of some acceptable linearity that, in turn, impacts the power consumption.

I am being vague and general because discussion of these topics become very "application specific" very quickly.

Title: Re: RFIC power consumption as a function of frequency, bandwidth and modulation
Post by musiige on Jan 9^th, 2011, 10:12pm

Thanks for this good information. However, am wondering if you have a reference to that information.

Title: Re: RFIC power consumption as a function of frequency, bandwidth and modulation
Post by RFICDUDE on Jan 10^th, 2011, 3:09am

A couple of references that come to mind are ...

L.E. Larson, "Silicon technology tradeoffs for radio-frequency/mixed-signal "systems-on-a-chip"," Electron Devices, IEEE Transactions on , vol.50, no.3, pp. 683- 699, March 2003
doi: 10.1109/TED.2003.810482

Dickson, T.O.; Yau, K.H.K.; Chalvatzis, T.; Mangan, A.M.; Laskin, E.; Beerkens, R.; Westergaard, P.; Tazlauanu, M.; Ming-Ta Yang; Voinigescu, S.P.; , "The Invariance of Characteristic Current Densities in Nanoscale MOSFETs and Its Impact on Algorithmic Design Methodologies and Design Porting of Si(Ge) (Bi)CMOS High-Speed Building Blocks," Solid-State Circuits, IEEE Journal of , vol.41, no.8, pp.1830-1845, Aug. 2006

Bennett, H.S.; Brederlow, R.; Costa, J.C.; Cottrell, P.E.; Huang, W.M.; Immorlica, A.A., Jr.; Mueller, J.-E.; Racanelli, M.; Shichijo, H.; Weitzel, C.E.; Bin Zhao; , "Device and technology evolution for Si-based RF integrated circuits," Electron Devices, IEEE Transactions on , vol.52, no.7, pp. 1235- 1258, July 2005

The last paper talks some about the ITRS roadmap that is driving some of the performance improvements in key integrated technologies specifically for analog/RF mixed signal circuits. So, there is industry awareness of the trends and performance dependencies between communication circuits and device technology.

Cheers

Title: Re: RFIC power consumption as a function of frequency, bandwidth and modulation
Post by musiige on Jan 12^th, 2011, 2:08am

Thanks very much for the references. Do you apparently also have some references connecting the RFIC power consumption to the modulation and bandwidth?

Title: Re: RFIC power consumption as a function of frequency, bandwidth and modulation
Post by loose-electron on Jan 22^nd, 2011, 12:40pm

Also being left out of the equation:

Noise (input referred)
and
Linearity.

Better linearity and noise generally implies higher power consumption. The question you are asking has a dozen or more variable in play, so its tough to answer.