Millimeter Wave Radio: From Bits to Millimeter Waves and From Millimeter Waves to Bits

One of the main challenges of these new radios is bandwidth. 5G mmWave radios nominally have to handle 1 GHz of bandwidth or potentially higher, depending on how the spectrum is actually allocated. While 1 GHz of bandwidth at 28 GHz is relatively low (3.5%), 1 GHz of bandwidth at, say, a 3 GHz IF is much more challenging to design for and requires some advanced techniques to achieve a high-performance design.

Figure 1 shows an example block diagram of a high performance bits-to-millimeter wave radio based on components that make up ADI’s broad RF and mixed-signal product portfolio.

Figure 1. Wideband bits-to-mmWave radio block diagram

The signal chain was demonstrated to support continuous 8 × 100 MHz NR carriers at 28 GHz with excellent error vector magnitude (EVM) performance. More details on this signal chain and its demonstrated performance can be found in the Analog Devices 5G mmWave Base Station video.