SBIR-STTR Award

Linear Efficient Broadband Transmitter Architecture at mm-wave frequencies
Award last edited on: 9/14/2018

Sponsored Program
SBIR
Awarding Agency
DOD : Army
Total Award Amount
$599,999
Award Phase
2
Solicitation Topic Code
A17-027
Principal Investigator
J David Irwin

Company Information

Digital Analog Integration Inc

1634 Presley Court
Auburn, AL 36830
   (334) 524-1118
   N/A
   www.dainteg.com
Location: Single
Congr. District: 03
County: Lee

Phase I

Contract Number: W911QX-17-P-0159
Start Date: 00/00/00    Completed: 00/00/00
Phase I year
2017
Phase I Amount
$99,999
There is an ever-increasing demand on low-cost high-throughput wireless front-ends. Such high-throughput front-ends support broadband data transmission (multi-Gbit/s) for a wide variety of sensors and unmanned platforms in situational awareness, monitoring, and reconnaissance. Their wideband nature also supports the deployment of broadband communication/radar combo-systems, as well as numerous emerging commercial applications such as 5G networks, augmented reality (AR)/virtual reality (VR) devices, and hyperspectral imaging systems. The transmitter often governs the total output power, energy consumption, linearity, and bandwidth of the communication/radar front-end, which respectively determines the communication distance, energy efficiency, signal-fidelity/emission, and modulation rates. Although mm-Wave transmitters supports large signal bandwidth, existing designs exhibit limited output power and compromised efficiency, in particular at deep power-back-off (PBO) situation. Moreover, the linearity of such high-throughput transmitters cannot be enhanced using conventional techniques, such as feedback-based digital pre-distortion (DPD), which are unable to support multi-Gbit/s bandwidth and require impractical baseband computation complexity. In phase I of this SBIR project, Digital Analog Integration, Inc. and Georgia Tech team will work closely to investigate, design, and simulate watt-level broadband dual-mode mixed-signal mm-wave Doherty transmitter in all-silicon and silicon/GaN heterogeneous integration platforms with our novel Doherty PA based highly efficient transmitter architecture.

Phase II

Contract Number: W911QX-19-C-0004
Start Date: 00/00/00    Completed: 00/00/00
Phase II year
2019
Phase II Amount
$500,000
There is an ever-increasing demand on low-cost high-throughput wireless front-ends. Such high-throughput front-ends support broadband data transmission (multi-Gbit/s) for a wide variety of sensors and unmanned platforms in situational awareness, monitoring, and reconnaissance. Their wideband nature also supports the deployment of broadband communication/radar combo-systems, as well as numerous emerging commercial applications such as 5G networks, augmented reality/virtual reality systems.The transmitter often governs the total output power, energy consumption, linearity, and bandwidth of the communication/radar front-end, which respectively determines the communication distance, energy efficiency, signal-fidelity/emission, and modulation rates. Although mm-Wave transmitters supports large signal bandwidth in theory, existing hardware exhibits limited output power and compromised efficiency, in particular at deep power-back-off situation. Moreover, the linearity of such high-throughput transmitters cannot be enhanced using conventional techniques, such as feedback-based digital pre-distortion (DPD), which are unable to support multi-Gbit/s bandwidth since it requires impractical baseband computation complexity.In phase I, Digital Analog Integration, Inc. and Georgia Tech team have demonstrated the feasibility of the proposed watt-level broadband dual-mode mixed-signal mm-wave Doherty transmitter. In phase II, we will work closely to investigate an all-silicon and silicon/compound-semiconductor heterogeneous integration platforms for the implementation of our novel Doherty PA based highly efficient transmitter architecture.