System on Chip Design Integrated With Visible Light Communication and Multi Mode Multi Band Radio Frequency Front End
Year: 2017

Author(s) Lu, Fei Advisor(s) Wang,  Nowadays, the modern communication system employing the electromagnetic theory has been the mainstream in our daily life, which allows people to interact directly with people from all over the world, creating a more global society. In addition, the increasing demand for wireless data pushes the technology to move forward, the emergence of LTE and LTE advanced standards already facilitate the human life greatly. In the next a few years, the fifth generation communication system employing the massive MIMO and carrier aggregation technique will further increase the data rate to enrich the application of mobile device at the price of more complex Base band (BB) modulation/demodulation method and Multi mode supported Front End Module (FEM) and more add on frequency bands require a highly integrated chip to minimize the cost and size. However, consider the individual circuit performance, the power amplifier, switch, analog circuit usually will use different technology, Gallium Arsenide (GaAs) silicion on insulator (SOI) complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) Bulk CMOS for each, therefor it will increase the cost and package complexity. Due to the limitation of licensed bandwidth and power trade off predicted by Shannon theory, we can forecast that the communication based on wireless electromagnetic will encounter the data rate bottleneck, so that another supplementary communication method as Visible Light Communication (VLC) is proposed. Conventional lighting using incandescent and fluorescent lamps are believed to be replaced by high efficiency lighting LED because of the benefits of low power, long life, inherent safety and small integrated packaging. At the same time, LED can be turned on/off very quickly without flickering to human eyes, so it enable the LED to modulate the signal to realize wireless communication, it really promising to use that in the internet of things (IOT) near field communication or some radio frequency sensitive area, like hospital. Unfortunately, all reported VLC systems are assembled in PCB with discrete component and separated from RF system.This dissertation presents a novel true single chip, single die, Multi mode Multi band (MMMB) Power Amplifier FEM and VLC designed and implemented in IBMSOI 0.18um technology. Its ultra high efficiency and high linearity architecture offers broadband support of WCDMA, HSDPA, HSUPA, HSPA+ TD SCDMA and FDD/TDD LTE modes. FEM integrates low band, mid band and high band power amplifiers with input and output impedance matched to 50O, and ESD protection circuits. In addition, this chip integrated switches to support more than nineteen frequency bands for all 3G and 4G modulations. It meets all 3G/4G specifications as stated in 3GPP WCDMA and LTE standards. Output power is controlled by changing the input power and VCC is adjustable to maximize PA efficiency for each power level. The VLC transceiver is also integrated. A low cost and high performance solution for the highly integrated chip in the future communications systems in terms of RF and LED Light.