Novel base station radio technologies for third-generation wireless applications

In this paper, we address novel base station radio architectures with emphasis on radio frequency (RF) integration for multi-carrier operation. Radio architectures and device technologies that influence the system performance for wideband signal transport have been discussed. We have shown that a direct conversion transmitter with a digital intermediate frequency (DIF) receiver architecture is the most effective architecture for new base station radio implementation. The recently developed high performance silicon germanium-heterojunction bipolar transistor (SiGe-HBT) and RF complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technologies are promising to be suitable for RF integration in multichip modules or integrated circuit (IC) formats for deployment in base station radios.