Renesas Electronics have announced new technology for wireless data exchangeover a distance of 1cm with a transmission rate of 15Mbps by using an on-chip antenna with a diameter of 1mm.
The announcement was made June 16, 2010, at the 2010 Symposium on VLSI Circuits, which runs from June 16 to 18, 2010, in Honolulu, Hawaii. The company say the new technique may unwire, for example, the connectors of memory cards.
In short-range wireless data communications, data is usually demodulated based on synchronisation signals generated by the phase-lock loop of a receiving circuit. But fluctuating synchro signals can cause reception errors. Renesas address this problem by applying a wire communication technique known as “source-synchronous communication”—simultaneously transmitting data and synchro signals—to wireless communication.
The new wireless technology transmits data signals with a carrier wave of frequency 3.6GHz, and synchrosignals with a carrier wave of frequency 4.8GHz. And it separates data signals and synchro signals by using the filter of a receiving circuit. Renesas prototyped a transceiver circuit having an on-chip antenna with a diameter of 1mm by using 90nm CMOS process technology and evaluated it. And the company found that a data transmission rate of 15Mbps and a bit error rate of 10 -5 , sufficient for transmitting video, were achieved at a transmission distance of 1cm.
In addition, Renesas confirmed that the location error of up to 1cm can be tolerated for the transmitting antenna and the receiving antenna.
The company plan to commercialise the technology in two or three years, and to enhance data transmission speed as well.
