Countries around the world are actively building 5G networks. In light of the technical characteristics of 5G, a larger number of base stations will be deployed more intensively than 4G networks, which also represents the huge business opportunities arising out of building these 5G networks. This article will show you the development of 5G technology and the product features and advantages of radio frequency (RF) transceivers from ADI to help you seize market opportunities.
With the increasing rise of the volume of mobile data, the world is entering the era of digital transformation
In this mobile network world, modern people rely more and more on smart phones and mobile networks. People are used to sharing videos and photos on social media, resulting in the increasing generation and use of mobile data. In addition, with the approaching machine age, more and more devices need to be connected to a network, whether Internet of Things devices or the rapidly developing Internet of Vehicles applications, which means that more devices will be connected through mobile networks in the future.
At present, people are entering the era of digital transformation and undergoing earth-shaking changes for their daily living, working, and moving style. Although smart phones mainly serve as the interface between people and information for the time being, future devices will actively communicate with each other and will not be affected by human interaction. A powerful mobile network that monitors people's surrounding environment through dense interconnected sensor networks and connects everyone and everything with high reliability and low latency is the core of the upcoming digital transformation.
5G networks provide higher data throughput and network capacity
In order to meet the networking needs of more and more devices, reduce the delay in connection and improve reliability, 5G networks are currently the most important communication technology. At present, countries around the world are actively laying out 5G networks and entering the transition period of development from 4G networks to 5G networks. 5G can provide higher throughput and flexibility, and its new features will realize many new applications.
Technically, the goal of realizing the three applications, i.e. enhance mobile broadband (eMBB), massive machine type connectivity (mMTC), and ultra-reliable low latency communications (uRLLC) is promoting the development of 5G. Currently, the industrial 5G focus is on eMBB, developing toward higher network capacity and throughput by using beamforming technology in mid band and high band spectrum. In addition, there are also many emerging applications that take advantage of the low latency characteristics of 5G network architecture, such as industrial automation.
The eMBB has driven the demand for higher data throughput and network capacity. The capacity of cellular base stations can be improved through three major measures, including acquiring new spectrum, increasing base station density, and improving spectral efficiency. At present, the world is providing new spectrum for mobile applications, and network density is increasing by adding small cells, but there is still a great need to improve the utilization rate of the available spectrum.
The massive multi-input and multi-output (MIMO) technology that has arisen in recent years can significantly improve spectral efficiency. Through the combination of a large number of antennas and signal processing algorithms, the system can transmit independent data streams to multiple users in the same spectrum, which greatly improves the spectrum efficiency and further greatly improves the cellular throughput. Massive MIMO has been proven to increase mobile data throughput by 3 to 5 times and mobile data throughput will continue to improve.
Highly integrated RF transceivers provide complete solutions
As demand for data increases globally, telecom infrastructure manufacturers are challenged by a shorter time to market, increased antenna count, ever-growing cost pressure, and proliferation in variants of form factors, frequency bands, output power, and software. The ADRV9026, ADI’s 4th generation wideband RF transceiver, delivers quad-channel integration with the lowest power, smallest size, common platform solution available to simplify design and reduce system power, size, weight, and costs for 3G/4G/5G applications, including multi-standard base stations, massive MIMO, and small cells.
ADRV9026
ADI’s ADRV9026 is a highly integrated, agile radio frequency transceiver offering four independently controlled transmitters, dedicated observation receiver inputs for monitoring each transmitter channel, four independently controlled receivers, integrated synthesizers, and digital signal processing functions providing a complete transceiver solution.
The receiver subsystem consists of four independent, wide bandwidth, direct conversion receivers with a wide dynamic range. The four independent transmitters use a direct conversion modulator resulting in low noise operation with low power consumption. The device also includes two wide bandwidth, time shared, observation path receivers with two inputs each for monitoring transmitter outputs.
The complete transceiver subsystem includes automatic and manual attenuation control, dc offset correction, quadrature error correction (QEC), and digital filtering, eliminating the need for these functions in the digital baseband. Other auxiliary functions such as analog-to-digital converters (ADCs), digital-to-analog converters (DACs), and general-purpose input/outputs (GPIOs) that provide an array of digital control options are also integrated.
To achieve a high level of RF performance, the transceiver includes five fully integrated phase-locked loops (PLLs). Two PLLs provide low noise and low power fractional-N RF synthesis for the transmitter and receiver signal paths. A third fully integrated PLL supports an independent local oscillator (LO) mode for the observation receiver. The fourth PLL generates the clocks needed for the converters and digital circuits, and a fifth PLL provides the clock for the serial data interface.
A multichip synchronization mechanism synchronizes the phase of all LOs and baseband clocks between multiple ADRV9026 chips. All voltage controlled oscillators (VCOs) and loop filter components are integrated and adjustable through the digital control interface.
The serial data interface consists of four serializer lanes and four deserializer lanes. The interface supports both the JESD204B and JESD204C standards, operating at data rates up to 16 Gbps. The interface also supports interleaved mode for lower bandwidths, thus reducing the number of high speed data interface lanes to one. Both fixed and floating-point data formats are supported. The floating-point format allows internal automatic gain control (AGC) to be invisible to the demodulator device.
The ADRV9026 is powered directly from 1.0 V, 1.3 V, and 1.8 V regulators and is controlled via a standard serial peripheral interface (SPI) serial port. Comprehensive power-down modes are included to minimize power consumption in normal use. The ADRV9026 is packaged in a 14 mm × 14 mm, 289-ball chip scale ball grid array (CSP_BGA).
Evaluation kit is provided to speed up product development
In order to speed up the product development for customers, ADI also introduced the EVAL-ADRV9026, the evaluation kit with the ADRV9026. It consists of the ADRV9026-HB/PCBZ and ADRV9026-MB/PCBZ radio cards designed to showcase the ADRV9026, quad-channel wideband RF transceiver. The radio cards provide a 4x4 transceiver platform for device evaluation. All peripherals necessary for the radio card to operate include a separate high efficiency power circuit board, and a high-performance clocking solution included on the radio board. Connecting one of the radio cards with the FPGA motherboard ADS9-V2EBZ through the FMC connector forms a complete evaluation platform for ADRV9026.
The EVAL-ADRV9026 complete radio cards for evaluation include ADRV9026-HB/PCBZ for frequency band 2.8GHz to 6GHz and ADRV9026-MB/PCBZ for frequency band 650MHz to 2.8GHz, 4x4 wideband RF transceiver platform operating over 650MHz to 6GHz frequency range. A separate power daughter card provides a reference design for high efficiency power supply solutions, including FMC connectors to the FPGA motherboard ADS9-V2EBZ, and schematics, layout, BOM, API, and evaluation software.
Conclusion
At present, many mobile operators around the world have begun to deploy 5G networks on a large scale. With the evolution of massive MIMO technology and the increase of new features in 3GPP wireless standards, 5G networks and related applications are expected to be popularized in the global mobile network. Adopting ADI's ADRV9026 RF transceiver will speed up the development of base station systems. It is time for seizing the 5G market opportunities!
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