RFIC Solution
A key group in Wipro Techno Centre is the RFIC group. It is currently headed by Mr. Masaaki Itoh and consists of 23 highly experienced and dedicated engineers to meet the various RF design challenges.
The design focus of the RFIC group revolves around (but not limited) the development of low power, short/mid range CMOS RFIC operating in the DC – 10GHz frequency region. We have been developing several RF solutions and IPs together with our technology partners for Bluetooth, Zigbee, WLAN, DSRC, UWB Transceivers and DTV tuner using state of the art CMOS & SOS technologies since our formation in 1996.
Our Bluetooth solution was recently featured in the RFIC Symposium in 2003 titled “Design Techniques to combat Process, Temperature and Supply variations in Bluetooth RFIC”.
The table below summarizes the various milestone products developed by the RFIC group since our formation in 1996.
| Year | Technology | Product developed |
|---|---|---|
| 2005 - Present | 90 nm CMOS | WLAN DTV Tuner UWB Transceiver Development |
| 2004 - 2006 | 0.25 µm SOS 0.15 µm CMOS 0.11 µm CMOS |
DSRC Transceiver - Electronic Toll Collection System Low Power Zigbee Transmitter WLAN Transceiver - IEEE 802.11 a/b/g
|
| 2004 | 0.25 µm CMOS | PLL for UHF Low Power Radio Zigbee Transmitter |
| 2003 - 2004 | 0.18 µm CMOS | Second Generation Bluetooth Transceiver |
| 2000 - 2003 | 0.35 µm CMOS | First Generation Bluetooth Transceiver -V1.0B |
Future challenges
Since most RF systems are eventually integrated along with the digital baseband processor on chip, and since the RF section is typically much smaller in area than the digital section, the migration to finer technology is likely to continue.
Integrating RF functional blocks together with the digital baseband as a SoC chip in the state of art CMOS technologies have imposed even more challenges to system designers and circuit designers. As technologies shrinks, head room is decreasing, leakage current is increasing, process tolerance will be worse and digital noise from counter digital baseband will be ever increasing, all these issues demand more innovative system architectures and circuit techniques.
As mentioned earlier that we have accumulated much experiences in the most advance and state of art CMOS technologies from 0.35um to 90nm, we will continue to take up challenges such as 65nm, 45nm or less in the near future. The emerging standards for higher data rates such as IEEE802.11n, IEEE802.16e and other multi-mode wireless system are our immediate target projects.
