A mm-Precise 60 GHz Transmitter in 40 nm CMOS for Discrete-Carrier Indoor Localization Paramartha Indirayanti, Student Member , IEEE , Tuba Ayhan , Student Membe r , IEEE, Marian V erhelst, Member , IEEE,W i m D e h a e n e, Senior Member , IEEE

Abstract

This paper presents a multicarrier 60 GHz trans- mitter for distance measurement ( ranging) in an indoor wireless localization system, achieving mm-precision with high update rate. The architecture comprise s a baseband subcarrier gener- ator, an upconverter, and a power amplifier. There are three key innovations, all stemming from careful hardware-algorithm co-design: 1) efficient frequency planning of the 6 GHz-wide band; 2) power-efficient multicarrier signal generation by means of dig- ital frequency divisions exploiting the phase-based time-of-arrival ranging algorithm; and 3) PAPR reduction to enable efficient operation of the power amplifier. By implementing these key techniques, 0.7–2.7 mm precisi on is achieved over 5 m measured distance with 5.4 s symbol duration. During operation, the core digital subcarrier generator gen erates 16 non-equidistant sub- carriers from a 3 GHz input clock, while consuming an average p o w e ro f1 . 8m Wo u to f0 . 9 Vs u pply. The upconverter and the power amplifier altogether consume around 127 mW. The total area of the transmitter is 1.1 mm . The chip is fabricated in a 40nm general purpose CMOS process.