Imec Demonstrates Low-Power 7Gbps 60GHz Transceiver

Imec, in collaboration with Panasonic, has developed a prototype of a 60GHz radio transceiver allowing to reach data rates of 7Gbps over short distances at very low power consumption. The chip achieves this performance over the four channels specified by the IEEE802.11ad standard. Imec’s low-power 60GHz solution is an important step towards adoption of 60GHz technology in low-cost battery-operated consumer products such as smart phones and tablets.

Today’s wireless consumer electronic products increasingly include data-intensive applications, while applications below 10GHz such as WLAN face spectrum scarcity. This drives wireless system designers to explore higher frequency bands such as the unlicensed band around 60GHz. This band is available throughout the world and enables multi-Gbps wireless communication over short distances. However, to enable 60GHz radio solutions for portable mass-market products, cost, area and power consumption need to drastically decrease. Imec’s ultra-low power CMOS-based solution is an important step to solve these challenges.

“We are excited that we achieved together with our partner Panasonic these excellent results;” said Liesbet Van der Perre, scientific program director green radios. “These results prove that our 60GHz R&D program pioneers industry-relevant design solutions for low cost and low power 60GHz phased array radios covering the system level, IC design and antenna design. We work towards a proof-of-concept for the complete system, compliant with the applicable industrial standards. We invite other companies to join our 60GHz R&D program as research partner or they can have access to the technology for further development through licensing.”