Efficient self-correction scheme for static non-idealities in nano-scale quadrature digital RF transmitters

As a disruptive solution exploiting the intrinsic speed of deeply scaled CMOS technology, digital RF transmitter has attracted extensive attention for its capability to handle multiple radio standards. However, deeply scaled nano level technology has both pros and cons, so that state-of-the-art designs still suffer from the combination of a large number of non-idealities that are inherent in deeply scaled technology. In this paper, a solution is proposed for the first time to tackle major static non-idealities simultaneously in digital RF transmitter employing an ultra-high-bandwidth digital-to-analog converter. Whereas existing work focuses on only correcting one or few non-idealities in isolated ways. The proposed input-signal segmentation and polynomial transforming scheme makes the proposal a computational efficient solution. Simulation combined with lab measurement results show that, after applying the proposed non-linearity self-correction scheme, on average, the root-mean-square error of a 28-nm digital RF transmitter output can be reduced by over 20 dB.