This book is based on my doctoral thesis at the Helsinki University of Technology. Several different projects during five years guided me from the basics of the RF IC design to the implementations of highly integrated radio receiver chips. Sharing time and effort between IC and system issues is not always straightforward. I have been lucky to follow both topics and share experiences with diligent and enthusiastic people having different specialities. As a result,
this book will cover a wide range of different topics needed in the design of highly integrated radio receivers. Experiences from the first receiver prototypes for the third generation cellular systems form the basis of this book. Most of the issues are directly related to the early proposals of European and Japanese standardization organizations. For example, the chip rate was originally set to 4.096 Mcps in a wide-band CDMA channel. I have kept that number in the book in most of the examples although it has been later changed to 3.84 Mcps. I hope that the readers will accept that and the possible other incompabilities to the latest specifications. At least in the research phase the changes even in the most essential requirements are definitely not a rare incident and IC designers should be able to react and modify their designs as soon as they can.
Also several other new radio systems, like Bluetooth and wireless LAN, are coming to the market in a relatively short period of time hence often demanding shared resources and fast development times from IC designers. Radio system characteristics should be quickly transferred into integrated circuits using the most optimal architecture in each case. I hope that this book will be useful not only for IC designers contemplating on third generation cellular systems but also for professionals working with wider area of applications. To promote that I
have tried to collect the most essential issues from radio communication principles without going deep into theory. I have assumed that the reader is familiar with the basic RF and IC design principles, and most of the details can be found in the references. The main focus in this book is to transfer the system description into an optimal IC implementation in different cases.
Typically new systems will be specified without deep understanding of the implementation issues and even a small detail may cause considerable difficulties for the realization and extend the development time. Maybe this book could also give communications engineers some advice on the recent trends, limitations and capabilities of modern IC techniques for radio reception.
I have done the research work included in this book at the Electronic Circuit Design Laboratory, Helsinki University of Technology except for one year at the University of California Santa Barbara. My supervisor Professor Kari Halonen deserves my gratitude for his confidence to my work and for giving me excellent challenges and opportunities. With a great enthusiasm for analog electronics Professor Veikko Porra guided my interest in this field during my studies and
in the early steps of IC design. My first research project was given by Professor Stephen I. Long from the University of California Santa Barbara. He also offered me the possibility to work in California and instructed my research for several years. I am grateful for all his wise pieces of advice and for teaching me a scientific way of thinking. I would also like to thank Dr. Petteri Alinikula for the important support and encouragement he gave me as a teacher and as a mentor
at the beginning of my RF IC design efforts.
I would like to thank all my colleagues at the Electronic Circuit Design Laboratory. Especially, Mr. Kari Stadius and Dr. Risto Kaunisto deserve my gratitude for teaching me the essential practices of IC design and later being my close friends and advisors. Dr. Saska Lindfors taught
me a lot of things about CMOS design and I will remember the cooperation in subsampling issues as a fruitful experience. I learned the principles of the third generation cellular systems in the team with Jarkko Jussila, Jussi Ryynänen, Lauri Sumanen and Kalle Kivekäs. Their dedication to the collective challenges when integrating direct conversion receivers has been respectable. I would like to thank all of them individually and acknowledge their importance as
members of the team. Their work is an essential part of this book. Rami Ahola deserves my gratitude for prompt process support. I would also like to thank Rahul Magoon for the productive discussions and help during my stay at Santa Barbara. Timo Knuuttila has promoted this book by offering a challenging project to get acquainted with the third generation systems.
Mauri Honkanen has been a significant advisor for me in the area of radio systems.
Professor Qiuting Huang, Dr. Jan Sevenhans and Dr. Pertti Ikäläinen are acknowledged for reviewing my thesis. I would like to express my warmest thanks for their encouraging comments.
I wish to thank my wife Salla, my parents Anna-Leena and Tapio and my sister Maria with her family for their constant and strong support.
This book is based on the work, which has been financed by Graduate School in Electronics,Telecommunications and Automation, Technology Development Centre of Finland, Academy of Finland, Nokia Networks and Nokia Mobile Phones. Also, grants by Nokia Foundation, Foundation for Financial Aid at the Helsinki University of Technology, Emil Aaltonen Foundation and Elektroniikkainsinöörien säätiö (Foundation of Electronics Engineers in Finland) have given significant support. All of them are gratefully acknowledged.