A 2.4 GHz Phase Modulator for a WLAN OFDM Polar Transmitter in 0.18 um CMOS

Abstract

This research focuses on the design and implementation of a digital active phase modulator path of a polar transmitter in the case of orthogonal frequency division multiplex WLAN application. The phase modulation path of the polar transmitter provides a constant envelope phase modulated signal to the Power amplifier(PA) , operating in nonlinear high efficient switching mode. The core design of the phase modulator is based on linear vector-sum phase shifting topology to differential quadrature input signals. The active phase shifter consists of a DAC that generates binary weighted currents for I and Q branches and differential signed adder that vector-sums the generated quadrature currents to generate the phase at the output.6 bits control the phase shifter, creating 64 states with the resolution of 5:625° for the whole 360°. The linear (binary weighted) vector-sum technique generates a reduction in the resultant amplitude that should be taken into consideration in case of nonlinear PA in polar transmission. On the other hand, the digital phase information is applied as the control bits to the phase shifter that determine the weightings and the signs of the I and Q vectors. The key point is the operation of the phase modulator in terms of phase accuracy, with the wideband modulation standard such as OFDM WLAN.

A technique has been proposed to enable the polar phase modulator to operate with a real-time wideband data and to compensate for the phase shifter output reduction. Since the reduction in gain is due to vector sum resultant of I and Q currents, it is compensated by modifying the I and Q currents for each 64 phase states. The design is implemented using 0.18 um CMOS technology and measured with maximum data rate of 64 QAM,OFDM modulation of WLAN standard. The output amplitude of the phase shifter with the correction technique is approximately constant over the 64 states with maximum variation of 3.5mv from the constant peak to peak value. The maximum achieved phase error is about 2° with a maximum DNL of 0.257.