Super Fast 60 Ghz Gigabit RF Circuit From Korea Next Revolution in Smartphone Wireless Transfer

Scientists are currently studying the adoption of multi-gigabit per second (Gbps) wireless communication chips, over 100 times faster than a speedy wlan network, that operate at the over 60 gigahertz (GHz) frequency band. Important progress was now made to develop a highly compact and energy efficient 60 GHz RF circuit suitable for smartphone devices. Some commercial approaches have already been introduced for full-HD video streaming from a fixed source to a display by using the 60 GHz band. But mobile applications have not been developed yet because the 60 GHz radio frequency (RF) circuit consumes hundreds of milliwatts (mW) of DC power, draining a smartphone size battery too quickly.

The computing power of handheld devices increases to accommodate a greater number of functions, and these devices have more memory, larger display screens, and the ability to play higher definition video files. But if the users of mobile devices, including smartphones, tablet PCs, and notebooks, want to share or transfer data on one device with that of another device, a great deal of time and effort are needed.

Professor Chul Soon Park from the Department of Electrical Engineering at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) and his research team recently developed a low-power version of the 60 GHz radio frequency integrated circuit (RFIC). Inside the circuit are an energy-efficient modulator performing amplification as well as modulation and a sensitivity-improved receiver employing a gain boosting demodulator.

The research team said that their RFIC draws as little as 67 mW of power in the 60 GHz frequency band, consuming 31mW to send and 36mW to receive large volumes of data. RFIC is also small enough to be mounted on smartphones or notebooks, requiring only one chip (its width, length, and height are about 1 mm) and one antenna (4x5x1 mm3) for sending and receiving data with an integrated switch.

Professor Park, Director of the Intelligent Radio Engineering Center at KAIST, gave an upbeat assessment of the potential of RFIC for future applications:

"What we have developed is a low-power 60-GHz RF chip with a transmission speed of 10.7 gigabits per second. In tests, we were able to stream uncompressed full-HD videos from a smartphone or notebook to a display without a cable connection (Youtube Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PVSLBhMymc). Our chip can be installed on mobile devices or even on cameras so that the devices are virtually connected to other devices and able to exchange large data with each other."