Beamforming sustains high data rates over short distances

The chipset, which can deliver high data rates over short distances, is said to pave the way towards smaller, more power efficient consumer devices capable of high data rates. The microelectronics research centre added that the link budget had been 'boosted dramatically' through the use of beamforming. "Exchange of gigabytes of data between mobile devices requires a viable 60GHz technology that balances cost, size and power consumption," said Liesbet Van der Perre, imec's green radios programme director. "Imec's prototype transceiver chipset enables multigigabit wireless connectivity for 'true mobile' devices thanks to its very low power consumption. More demanding applications such as high definition video streaming and gaming with low latency, proximity computing and wireless docking can also be built on our technology." The prototype chipset consists of a receiver and a transmitter, both based on direct conversion combined with an on chip phased array architecture. While the receiver and transmitter chips are designed for four antenna paths, this can be increased because beamforming is applied at the analogue baseband, rather than in the rf portion. The chipset, which is targeted at a 40nm cmos process, consumes less than 1W from a 1.1V supply and can sustain a data rate of 4.62Gbit/s using QAM16 modulation over a distance of 70cm.