Henry Samueli

A single-chip universal burst receiver for cable modem/digital cable-TV applications

This paper presents a single-chip cable upstream receiver which demodulates QPSK/16-QAM burst data in a frequency-agile, time-division multiple access (TDMA) scheme. An analog front end (AFE), an all-digital receiver and an FEC decoder are integrated on chip. The AFE performs coarse gain setting and signal quantization on either an IF input or baseband I/Q inputs. The digital QAM receiver contains a quadrature down-mixer, multi-stage decimators, Nyquist filters, carrier/timing acquisition loops, and an adaptive equalizer. The FEC decoder consists of a programmable descrambler and a versatile Reed-Solomon decoder. The chip occupies 4.7/spl times/7.8 mm/sup 2/ die area in a 0.35-/spl mu/m CMOS process, and consumes 1.0 W at 3.3 V in a 100-pin PQFP.

A dual-channel QAM/QPSK receiver IC with integrated cable set-top box functionality

A digital cable-TV receiver IC with a 5 MBaud 64/256-QAM in-band channel and a 1 MBaud QPSK out-of-band channel incorporating on-chip forward error correction, tracking loops and adaptive decision feedback equalizers has been designed. The device further integrates out-of-band message separation and peripheral box control circuitry. The chip interfaces to a MC-68331 microprocessor and uses a mix of semicustom and custom design methodologies to achieve functionality in an 8 mm/spl times/8 mm die area with a 0.5 /spl mu/m CMOS technology, while dissipating 1.8 W at 5 V in a 208-pin PQFP package.

Challenges and opportunities in the broadband connected world

The communications IC industry is experiencing explosive growth as a result of the emergence of highly integrated, very low cost, mixed-mode (digital, analog and RF) system-on-a-chip (SoC) solutions that enable virtually every electronic device to be connected to a network. There are a multitude of communications technologies that are being developed to address the diverse demands of the connected user. The desirability of user mobility has driven wireless communications to be one of the fastest growing sectors of the communications IC industry. The requirement for very low power dissipation in these battery powered devices presents some unique challenges to the process technology industry as leakage currents and the inability to reduce power supply voltages much further become the limiting factors in choosing whether or not to adopt a next generation process node for a particular design.