A VLSI architecture for a high-speed all-digital quadrature modulator and demodulator for digital radio applications

An all-digital architecture is presented for implementing the front-end signal-processing functions in a quadrature modulator and demodulator for high bit-rate digital radio applications. A pair of CMOS chips has been designed and submitted for fabrication in a 1.25-μm process and is expected to accommodate symbol rates up to 35 MBd. The modulator chip accepts a pair of 8-b in-phase and quadrature data streams and generates a bandlimited IF output with an excess bandwidth factor of 35%. The demodulator chip accepts a digitized IF input signal and generates a pair of filtered in-phase and quadrature baseband signals. The modulator and demodulator chips each incorporate 40-tap multiplierless FIR (finite-impulse response) square-root Nyquist matched filters, and the cascade of the two chips achieves a peak intersymbol interference distortion of -54 dB. The modulator chip can generate any arbitrary signal constellation within a rectangular grid of 256×256 points. Thus, the all-digital implementation results in a generic chip set suitable for a wide variety of high bit-rate digital modem designs using formats such as M-ary PSK and QAM