Design Technology for Building Wireless Systems

Prelude:

The progress in IC technology is making chips that incorporate all the elements of a complete wireless radio system on a chip a real possibility. Such an ``antenna-to-network'' chip would incorporate an RF front end, baseband digital signal processing, link layer coding functions for error, compression, and encryption, and medium access control and other network protocols. This requires intergration of analog circuits, high performance custom signal processing datapaths and cores, customized logic, embedded processor, and complex software environments on the same chip. The design, simulation, implementation, and testing techniques required for such chips are complex, as are the metrics to evaluate the performance. The current effort in standardization of pre-designed macromodules, often referred to as "core cells," is expected to play a major role in making it possible for designers to build complete and customized wireless systems on a chip. However, the diversity of macromodules required in such wireless systems on a chip represents a special challenge in almost all aspects of IC/System design. In this tutorial we present the state of the art in designing such systems, focusing on both the CAD problems that arise from such chips as well as on the tools and design techniques. The presentation is roughly divided into three parts: basics of wireless systems; VLSI design issues for wireless systems; design tools and techniques for hardware and software for wireless systems.

Presenters:

Tutorial Outline and Slides

Important Notice:

Please read the notice at the bottom of this document. You may browse freely the material in this section and copy for personal use provided appropriate attributation to the document source is made. No part of the material here can be retrieved, copied or distributed for profit or commercial reasons without prior written permission from the author of this page.

Outline

  1. Welcome
  2. Introduction to Wireless Communication Systems
  3. Wireless Systems Design
  4. VLSI Circuits for Wireless Systems
  5. Design Technology for Wireless Systems
  6. Pre-designed Core Blocks and IP Issues
  7. Future Outlook and Conclusions

Wireless Bookmarks

On-chip architectural strategies and circuit structures

Tools for wireless system design

Pre-designed, pre-verified IP blocks for wireless systems


Important Notice:

This on-line material is being provided in the interest of rapid dissemination of information related to the tutorial presented at ICCAD 1997. Some or all of the material here may be covered by copyright owned by the respective authors. You may browse the material at your convenience as you would in a public library. Permission is also granted to make a hard copy for personal use without fee provided that the copied material clearly indicates the author and source of the material and any original copyright notations are unaltered. Retrieval, copy, or distribution of any material herein for profit or any commerical advantage may violate the copyright protection law and requires prior written permission of the copyright owners.
rgupta@ics.uci.edu

Last updated: Thu Oct 16 00:20:01 PDT 1997