Digital RF Power - Time-Domain-RF-Power Signal Generation

forthcoming

Wireless communications has made fantastic progress. Yet, the gravest concern is the relentless exponential increase in energy consumption of next-generation networks that adopt massive multi-input/multi-output (mMIMO) technology (e.g., in 5G/6G). Without any major breakthroughs, these networks will devour a big portion of the global electricity production in 2030. The chief culprit is the incumbent analog-intensive radio-frequency (RF) transmitter (TX) architecture of its front-end part, which invariably suffers from linearity/efficiency trade-offs and standby currents irrespective of data traffic. DISRUPT aims to bring new materials, devices, and design paradigm shifts by pioneering a revolutionary fully digital time-domain signal generation delivering high RF power that will finally profit from the (so-far mostly theoretical) 3000x performance advantage of III-Nitrides over Silicon. DISRUPTs breakthroughs will be: 1) Novel material and device concepts for the new “digital RF power” paradigm. 2) Merger of advanced CMOS with a to-be-developed (gate-)segmented III-N technology. This solution will utilize up to thousands of tiny low-VT III-N “digital” FET devices configured in switch-bank arrays that are individually controlled at picosecond accuracy by a CMOS controller through ultra-high-density flip-chip technology. This arrangement allows 3) distributed coherent signal generation, enabling a direct synthesis of nearly perfect high-power wideband TX waveforms with superior amplitude and phase control. As such, 4) new efficiency enhancement schemes will be pioneered. 5) Its CMOS-on-GaN nature will lead to seamless inclusion of 6) new: digital signal processing, clock generation, error detection, and artificial intelligence-based error correction, thereby reaching unprecedented system efficiencies. When successful, DISRUPT will enable a 50% reduction in the energy consumption of wireless networks compared to just following the expected development innovations.