Renesas joins IMEC’s 45nm RF transceivers program

Apr. 22, 2008 – Renesas Technology and European R&D consortia IMEC have entered into a strategic research collaboration to develop 45nm RF transceivers for Gbit/sec cognitive radios, building on previous work with 130nm RF transceiver (results published at last year’s ISSCC).

In the near term, work in IMEC’s software-defined radio (SDR) program will focus on developing a new reconfigurable radio in 45nm digital CMOS technology, with a programmable center frequency (100MHz-6GHz) and programmable bandwidth (100kHz-40MHz) covering all key communication standards, comparable to state-of-the-art single-mode transceivers.

Specifically, Renesas will participate in the associated SDR front-end program, which includes reconfigurable RF solutions, high-speed/low-power analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) and new approaches to digitize future RF architectures. The goal is to better understand and develop technology for Renesas’ future mobile electronics products.

“The ability to develop an innovative RF architecture with scaled-down CMOS technology and circuit technologies in transceiver products supporting next-generation cellular standards such as 3GPP-LTE and 4G’s is one of the key differentiators for our products that are superior in cost advantages, performance and power,” said Masao Nakaya, board director and executive GM of Renesas’ LSI product technology unit, in a statement.

“This proves the importance of our recent results on SDR and ADCs, and reflects the value IMEC brings to its industry partners in this RF research program,” added Rudy Lauwereins, VP of nomadic embedded systems at IMEC.

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