[hpsdr] First All-Digital Radio Transmitter

[Ari thor]

http://www.rfglobalnet.com/doc/first-all-digital-radio-transmitter-0001

First All-Digital Radio Transmitter

Radio Transmitter
Cambridge Consultants demonstrates a world first in radio design

Technology innovation firm Cambridge Consultants has successfully completed
initial trials of the world's first fully digital radio transmitter - a
turning point in wireless design and a real enabler for the 'Internet of
Things' (IoT) and 5G technology. It's a radio built purely from computing
power, using the same familiar digital technology you'd find in a computer
microprocessor in your home or office.

Unlike 'software-defined radio' (SDR), it's not a mixture of analogue and
digital components - for the first time, the radio is completely digital,
which can enable new ways of using spectrum intelligently. The innovation is
set to be hugely disruptive, like a previous Cambridge Consultants
breakthrough - the development of the first single-chip Bluetooth radio,
which led to the spinout of the global short-range wireless and audiovisual
giant CSR.

The latest breakthrough - codenamed Pizzicato - unlocks the potential of the
IoT. It  opens the door to a new dynamic way in which the predicted 100
billion IoT devices can operate together in a crowded radio spectrum. And it
will enable the creation of 5G systems, with multiple radios and antennas.

The Pizzicato digital radio transmitter consists of an integrated circuit
outputting a single stream of bits, and an antenna - with no conventional
radio parts or digital-to-analogue converter. Patented algorithms perform
the necessary ultra-fast computations in real time, making it possible for
standard digital technology to generate high-frequency radio signals
directly.

"Our first trial of the technology has created 14 simultaneous cellular base
station signals," said Monty Barlow, director of wireless technology at
Cambridge Consultants. "But it is the potential which is so exciting. Like
mainstream microprocessing, a Pizzicato-based radio would directly benefit
from Moore's Law - shrinking in cost, size and power consumption with each
new generation of silicon fabrication.

"If we're going to get high-speed broadband to every mobile phone in the
world, we'll need lots of tiny, high-performance radios in those phones. The
radios will be squashed together in a way that analogue just doesn't
tolerate. Whereas a Pizzicato-like digital radio can follow Moore's Law to
smaller size and lower power consumption.

"It could also be programmed to generate almost any combination of signals
at any carrier frequencies, nimbly adapting its behaviour in a way that is
impossible in conventional radios. It is early days for this technology but
we believe radio design has reached a turning point."

In recent decades, wireless design teams such as Cambridge Consultants have
employed extensive digital techniques in radios - and such SDRs have
provided a tenfold improvement in the data rate that can be squeezed into a
radio channel. But a more dramatic improvement is needed to cope with the
growth in mobile broadband and the IoT.

Good radio spectrum is a scarce resource - only low frequencies (1GHz or
lower) propagate well over distance or through walls, so they are in great
demand. Greater efficiency requires the use of dynamic or 'cognitive
wireless' techniques to sense the radio environment and switch parameters on
the fly. This could give access to more of the estimated 90% of the
allocated spectrum which is not in use at any one time.

Making use of the higher carrier frequencies of 10GHz and beyond, however,
will require techniques such as meshing and beamforming to circumvent the
inherently poor range - and the analogue parts of radios are becoming an
increasing bottleneck.

"Crowding 50 analogue radios together on one chip, switching their
operational parameters every few microseconds and expecting them to work at
60GHz is an analogue designer's nightmare," said Barlow. "With Pizzicato, we
have created a glimpse of future disruptive technology - a radio built
purely from computing power."

About Cambridge Consultants

Cambridge Consultants has one of the world's largest independent wireless
development teams, with more than 120 experts working in areas ranging from
ultra-low-power short-range wireless connectivity to global satellite
communication. During its 55-year history, the company has helped clients
develop technology ranging from the world's first wireless implanted pacing
system to the ground-to-air radio system controlling air traffic over the
majority of the planet.

SOURCE: Cambridge Consultants