The evolution of wireless technology has necessitated the support of multiple communication standards by mobile devices. At present, multiple chipsets/radios operating at predefined sets of modulation schemes, frequency bands, bandwidths and output power levels are used to achieve this objective. This leads to higher component counts, increased cost and limits the capacity to cope with future communication standards. In order to tackle different wireless standards using a single chipset, digital circuits have been increasingly deployed in radios and demonstrated re-configurability in different modulation schemes (multimode) and frequency bands (multiband). Despite efforts and progress made in digitizing the entire radio, the power amplifier (PA) is still designed using an conventional approach and has become the bottleneck in digital transmitters, in terms of low average power efficiency, poor compatibility with modern CMOS technology and limited re-configurability. This research addresses these issues from two aspects. The first half of the thesis investigates signal encoding issues between the modulator and PA. We propose, analyze and evaluate a new hybrid amplitude/time signal encoding scheme that significantly improves the coding efficiency and dynamic range of a digitally modulated power amplifier (DMPA) without significantly increasing design complexity. The proposed hybrid amplitude/time encoding scheme combines both the amplitude domain and the time domain to optimally encode information. Experimental results show that hybrid amplitude/time encoding results in a 35% increase in the average coding efficiency with respect to conventional time encoding, and is only 6.7% lower than peak efficiency when applied to a Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) signal with a peak to average power ratio equal to 9.9 dB. A new DMPA architecture, based on the proposed hybrid encoding, is also proposed. The second half of this thesis presents the design, analysis and implementation of a CMOS PA that is amenable to the proposed hybrid encoding scheme. A multi-way current mode class-D PA architecture has been proposed and realized in 130 nm CMOS technology. The designed PA has satisfied the objectives of wide bandwidth (1.5 GHz - 2.7 GHz at 1 dB output power), and high efficiency (PAE 63%) in addition to demonstrating linear responses using the proposed digital encoding. A complete digital transmitter combining the encoder and the multi-way PA was also investigated. The overall efficiency is 27% modulating 7.3 dB peak to average power ratio QAM signals.

The evolution of wireless technology has necessitated the support of multiple communication standards by mobile devices. At present, multiple chipsets/radios operating at predefined sets of modulation schemes, frequency bands, bandwidths and output power levels are used to achieve this objective. This leads to higher component counts, increased cost and limits the capacity to cope with future communication standards. In order to tackle different wireless standards using a single chipset, digital circuits have been increasingly deployed in radios and demonstrated re-configurability in different modulation schemes (multimode) and frequency bands (multiband). Despite efforts and progress made in digitizing the entire radio, the power amplifier (PA) is still designed using an conventional approach and has become the bottleneck in digital transmitters, in terms of low average power efficiency, poor compatibility with modern CMOS technology and limited re-configurability. This research addresses these issues from two aspects. The first half of the thesis investigates signal encoding issues between the modulator and PA. We propose, analyze and evaluate a new hybrid amplitude/time signal encoding scheme that significantly improves the coding efficiency and dynamic range of a digitally modulated power amplifier (DMPA) without significantly increasing design complexity. The proposed hybrid amplitude/time encoding scheme combines both the amplitude domain and the time domain to optimally encode information. Experimental results show that hybrid amplitude/time encoding results in a 35% increase in the average coding efficiency with respect to conventional time encoding, and is only 6.7% lower than peak efficiency when applied to a Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) signal with a peak to average power ratio equal to 9.9 dB. A new DMPA architecture, based on the proposed hybrid encoding, is also proposed. The second half of this thesis presents the design, analysis and implementation of a CMOS PA that is amenable to the proposed hybrid encoding scheme. A multi-way current mode class-D PA architecture has been proposed and realized in 130 nm CMOS technology. The designed PA has satisfied the objectives of wide bandwidth (1.5 GHz - 2.7 GHz at 1 dB output power), and high efficiency (PAE 63%) in addition to demonstrating linear responses using the proposed digital encoding. A complete digital transmitter combining the encoder and the multi-way PA was also investigated. The overall efficiency is 27% modulating 7.3 dB peak to average power ratio QAM signals.

Cette thèse porte sur les défis techniques et technologiques dans la conception des architectures mobiles d'émission « tout numérique » reconfigurables fonctionnant dans les bandes cellulaires pour les standards GSM, W-CDMA, HSUPA et LTE. Avec l'évolution constante des besoins en communication, les terminaux mobiles doivent être en mesure de couvrir différents standards à partir d'une même architecture, en fonction des bandes de fréquences libres, du débit et des contraintes spectrales. Dans un but de réduction des coûts, de consommation et d'une plus grande intégration, de nouvelles architectures dites multistandards se sont développées permettant à un seul émetteur d'adresser chaque standard au lieu de paralléliser plusieurs architectures radio chacune dédiée à un standard particulier. Depuis plusieurs années ont émergé des technologies nanométriques telles que le CMOS 90nm ou 65nm, ouvrant la voie à une plus grande numérisation des blocs fonctionnels des architectures jusqu'alors analogiques. Dans cette étude, nous identifions les évolutions possibles entre « monde analogique » et « monde numérique » permettant de déplacer la limite de la bande de base jusqu'à l'amplificateur de puissance. Plusieurs architectures ont été étudiées avec des degrés de numérisation progressifs jusqu'à atteindre l'architecture « tout numérique » englobant une partie de l'amplification de puissance. Un travail approfondi sur l'étude des différents standards cellulaires mené conjointement avec l'implémentation et la simulation de ces architectures, a permis d'identifier les différents verrous technologiques et fonctionnels dans le développement d'architectures « tout numérique ». Les contraintes de pollution spectrale des raies de sur-échantillonnage sont apparues comme dimensionnantes. Pour chaque bande de chaque standard, ces contraintes ont été évaluées, afin de définir une méthode d'optimisation des fréquences de sur-échantillonnage. Cependant un filtrage externe reste nécessaire. Une deuxième étape nous a amené à identifier et concevoir une technique de filtrage passe bande reconfigurable pour les bandes cellulaires de 1710 à 1980MHz avec au moins 60MHz de largeur de bande afin d'adresser le standard LTE, et 23dB d'atténuation à 390MHz du centre de la bande pour adresser le pire cas de filtrage (bandes 1, 3 et 10 en W-CDMA). Nous avons alors conçu et implémenté un filtre reconfigurable à inductances actives, afin de garantir reconfigurabilité et très faibles pertes d'insertion. Cette thèse a donc permis à partir d'une problématique actuelle et au travers d'une démarche d'identification des limites des architectures « tout numérique », de proposer un prototype de filtre adapté. Ce filtre a été conçu en CMOS 65nm, réalisé et mesuré, les performances sont conformes aux exigences requises / This thesis addresses the technical and technological challenges in the design of “all digital” reconfigurable mobile architectures operating cellular standard bands (GSM, WCDMA, HSUPA and LTE). With the ever-changing communication needs, mobile devices must be able to address different standards from a common architecture depending on free frequency bands, data rate and spectral constraints. In order to reduce costs, consumption and to obtain a greater integration, new architectures were developed and called multi-standard allowing a single transmitter to transmit each standard instead of parallelizing several radio architectures each dedicated to a particular standard. For several years nanoscale technologies such as 90nm or 65nm CMOS have emerged, clearing the way to replace analog functional blocks by greater digital functional blocks. In this study, we identify possible changes between "analog world" and "digital world" to move the digital boundary from the baseband to power amplifier. Several architectures have been studied with progressive digitization degrees to meet "all digital" architecture, comprising part of the power amplifier. Extensive work on the study of different cellular standards conducted jointly with the implementation and simulation of these architectures, let us identified the different technological and functional locks in the development of "all digital" architectures. Oversampling spurious constraints have emerged as dimensioning. For each band of each standard, these constraints were evaluated to define an optimization method of over-sampling frequency. However an external filter is required. A second step led us to identify and design a reconfigurable bandpass filtering technique for cellular bands from 1710 to 1980MHz with at least 60MHz of bandwidth in order to address the LTE, and 23dB attenuation at 390MHz from the center of the filter to address the most constringent filtering cases (bands 1, 3 and 10 in W-CDMA). We then designed and implemented a reconfigurable filter based on active inductors to ensure reconfigurability and very low insertion loss. This thesis permit from an actual architecture system issue and through a process to identify limitations of “all digital” architectures, to propose an adapted filtering solution. This filter was designed in 65nm CMOS, implemented. Measured performance is consistent with requirements