Low-power FSK/Spatial Modulation Transceiver for mm-wave Wireless Links; Links with Sommerfeld Wave Propagation over Single Wire

Spatial modulation or space shift keying (SSK) is a transmission technique that can be achieved by mapping bits to specific antennas or by mapping bits to specific transmission directions using TX arrays, particularly if the RX has multiple antennas that provide TX-RX direction discrimination. In the first work, we propose to leverage the small physical size/large available bandwidth of mm-wave systems to demonstrate combined frequency and spatial modulation in a mm-wave TX, targeting links operating in slow varying channels. A pulsed mm-wave digitally-controlled oscillator (DCO) provides low-power FSK capability, while variable pulse trigger delay achieves controlled relative phase between TX elements for low-power SSK. A two-element 65nm CMOS TX prototype is packaged with PCB antennas to demonstrate a 2-FSK/4-SSK 3Gb/s TX up to 60cm with 21.4mW power consumption, achieving ~7.1 pJ/bit.

The low loss and wide dispersion-free bandwidth of Sommerfeld-wave propagation on a single conductor wire (SCW) promises another direction for achieving energy-efficient high data rate links. In the second work, the first fully-integrated end-to-end wireline transceiver system on a SCW using Sommerfeld-wave propagation mode is demonstrated using a 60-GHz carrier frequency. The link achieves 7Gb/s data rate across 20cm of 26AWG bare copper wire (diameter = 0.4mm), while consuming 70.9mW of power. Operating at 6Gb/s and 7Gb/s, this work achieves BER < 10e-12 and 10e-5 respectively.

Major Advisor: Arun Natarajan
Committee: Karti Mayaram
Committee: Gabor Temes
Committee: Andreas Weisshaar
GCR: William Warnes