A cognitive radio transceiver senses its radio environment and adaptively utilizes free parts of the radio spectrum. CMOS IC-technology is the mainstream technology to implement smart signal processing and for reasons of cost and size it is attractive to also integrate the radio frequency (RF) hardware in CMOS. This talk reviews a few radio transceiver ICs designed for cognitive radio applications, with focus on analog RF. Cognitive radio asks for new functionality, e.g. spectrum sensing and more flexibility in the radio transmitter and receiver. Some recent circuit ideas that address these challenges will be discussed, and examples of chips and their achieved performance will be given.
Eric Klumperink, Universiteit Twente