Patent ID: 8855579

Claim:
A wireless communication element, comprising: a receive path configured to receive a first wireless communication signal and convert the first wireless communication signal into a first digital signal based at least on an oscillator signal; a transmit path configured to convert a second digital signal into a second wireless communication signal based at least on the oscillator signal and transmit the second wireless communication signal; an oscillator configured to output the oscillator signal to at least one of the receive path and the transmit path, the oscillator configured to operate at an operating frequency based on an applied frequency control signal; and a frequency control path configured to generate the applied frequency control signal, the frequency control path comprising: a frequency estimator configured to, during a calibration phase of the wireless communication element, for each of a plurality of frequency control calibration signal values, estimate an actual frequency of the first digital signal; an integral non-linearity detector configured to, during the calibration phase: for each of the plurality of frequency control calibration signal values, measure a frequency difference between the actual frequency and an expected frequency associated with the frequency control calibration signal value; and based on the frequency differences measured for the plurality of frequency control calibration signal values, generate integral non-linearity compensation values, each integral non-linearity compensation value associated with a corresponding possible frequency control signal value; an integral non-linearity compensation module configured to, during an operation phase of the wireless communication element, generate a compensated frequency control signal value based on a frequency control signal value received by the integral non-linearity compensation module and an integral non-linearity compensation value associated with the frequency control signal value; and a digital-to-analog converter configured to: during the calibration phase, generate the applied frequency control signal based on a frequency control calibration signal value received by the digital-to-analog converter; and during the operation phase, generate the applied frequency control signal based on the compensated frequency control signal value generated by the integral non-linearity compensation module.