Arctic Semiconductor Introduces Novel Low-Power, All-in-One Transceiver
Announced today, SilverWings is the first all-in-one 5G 4x4 MIMO transceiver of its kind, designed for radios, satcom, wireless equipment, instrumentation, and beyond.
Arctic Semiconductor today announced the SilverWings low-power, all-in-one transceiver chip. The integrated chip can help designers implement high-performance 5G communications in various wireless devices such as radios, satellite communications systems, repeaters, wireless access points, medical devices, instrumentation, and consumer products.
Arctic Semiconductor says its new SilverWings chip supports a full set of digital-to-RF and RF-to-digital functions.
The SilverWings 4x4 multiple input, multiple output (MIMO) transceiver uses a patented analog and digital data conversion approach. It has multi-stage up- and down-conversion from digital to RF and RF to digital on the same silicon wafer. The RF section includes gain stages for improved automatic gain control (AGC), digital up-conversion (DUC), and digital down-conversion (DDC).
The 5G new radio (NR) device allows designers to implement 5G RF with a small parts count, low power consumption, and high performance. In a single chip, Silverwings converges sub-6 GHz and 6 GHz, including the Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) LTE band with a mmWave IF transceiver.
A Complete 5G NR Radio Solution
As part of a complete 5G radio setup, the SilverWings chip connects to a modem and host processor on one side and a set of four antennas on the other side in a MIMO configuration. MIMO is at the heart of today’s high-bandwidth wireless technology. It uses several antennas to simultaneously transmit and receive multiple data streams. A 4x4 system like SilverWings has four data streams and four antennas, enabling speed increases over 2x2 MIMO or single input, single output (SISO) systems.
SilverWings is an all-in-one RF transceiver for numerous applications, from wireless radios to massive MIMO base stations.
As the complexity and computing power requirements of mobile devices continue to increase, the power, weight, and size budget available for the radio system continues to decrease. The complexity of modern 5G radio systems makes design and packaging an even more difficult challenge. The Arctic Semiconductor SilverWings chip addresses both of those problems directly. The all-in-one nature reduces the design load and decreases the space and weight of the radio implementation. The 4x4 MIMO architecture and power reduction designed into the chip both increase radio efficiency and reduce the power requirements.
SilverWings' Key Features
The three-chip product line consists of:
- STND654-M1: 4 x low-power RF transceiver
- STND664-M1: 4 x low-power RF transceiver with digital pre-distortion (DPD) (BW ≤100 MHz)
- STND674-M1: 4 x low-power RF transceiver with DPD (BW >100 MHz)
All three parts feature multi-stage analog and digital up/down conversion for a flexible, programmable system design. Arctic Semiconductor claims the chip consumes very little power—approximately 60% less than similar 5G transceiver chips.
SilverWings 4x4 5G radio architecture.
SilverWings includes complete radio hardware, including IF and RF stages, and covers the full 5G NR spectrum, from 0.6 GHz to 7.2 GHz. The transceiver chip operates with a 4x4 MIMO antenna setup and supports both FR1 and FR2 IF front ends without requiring any IQ calibration.
Implementation Versatility: Single Chip or Array
SilverWings is configurable using an SPI interface and comes with a programming API to improve access to the customizable features. The complete integration eliminates many calibration and design steps, reducing time to market and post-design implementation costs.
The SilverWings chips are designed for standalone products; for instance, 5G wireless instrumentation requires a single SilverWings chip. However, they can also be used in multi-chip implementations, such as a massive MIMO base station with a large number of antenna arrays (32, 64, 128, or more).
Because of the chip's programmable multi-stage conversion design, designers can customize systems based on bandwidth, frequency, and other specifications to significantly boost performance.
All images used courtesy of Arctic Semiconductor.
