Kaben DS Fractional-N Synthesizer IP Successfully Fabricated in STMicroelectronics 0.35µm SiGe BiCMOS.

"Synthesizer IP enables multi-mode SoCs."

Ottawa, ON - March 17, 2003 – Kaben Research Inc., a leading developer of mixed-signal, Intellectual Property (IP) blocks for Wireless, System-on-a-Chip (SoC) manufacturers, announced today that its KR-SDS45-ST6G Delta-Sigma (DS) Fractional-N Synthesizer IP has been successfully fabricated in STMicroelectronics 0.35µm SiGe BiCMOS process (BiCMOS6G).

“Kaben's DS Synthesizer IP block enables SoC manufacturers to reduce the number of chips in a product family because they won't need to design to each customer's crystal reference frequency.” said Seste Dell'Aera, Kaben's VP Sales and Marketing. “Additionally, wireless chip vendors can reuse the DS synthesizer to integrate additional wireless standards into their existing systems elevating their value proposition to include single-chip multi-mode systems”

In today's wireless market, semiconductor manufacturers are faced with integrating higher levels of functionality and more technically demanding standards. Emerging systems such as WLAN 802.11a/g, with its error vector magnitude specification requires a low phase noise synthesizer. This demanding specification can be met using a DS Fractional-N synthesizer. To date, they have not been widely used on-chip because of the lack of in-house design expertise and the development cost. The Kaben KR-SDS45-ST6G IP cell is now available in STMicroelectronics BiCMOS6G process for integration into customer's SoCs.

In a wireless system, frequency synthesizers are used to convert signals up or down in frequency in both the receiver and transmitter. Traditional synthesizers are used in systems that have easy phase noise specifications or a large channel spacing. Phase noise is the amount of jitter present on a signal. In the transmitter, high phase noise can interfere with nearby wireless systems. High phase noise can also reduce the receiver's ability to detect signals. When narrower channel spacing is required, traditional synthesizers actually increase the amount of the phase noise in the system.

The Kaben Synthesizer solves this problem because is has a low phase noise of -95dBc/Hz at a 2kHz offset from a 2.4GHz output frequency while the frequency resolution is 20Hz or less. This fine resolution allows the synthesizer to tune to any channel using any crystal frequency, which offers enormous advantages to subsystem chip vendors because they no longer need to fabricate a different version of their chip for every customer that is using a different crystal. The low phase noise meets the tough requirements of emerging systems such as WLAN 802.11a/g.

Similarly the synthesizer's fine resolution enables single chip, multiple wireless standards, such as combinations of: multi-mode GSM, WCDMA, CDMA2000, WLAN a/b/g, or Bluetooth. Traditional synthesizers can not be used in multi-mode systems when the channels of two standards are not multiples of a common reference frequency.

About Kaben
Kaben Research is an IP company focused on design, development, and licensing of mixed-signal building blocks that are key to creating future SoC products. The company delivers high-performance, proven IP blocks to SoC manufacturers in the wireless communications market that significantly reduce risk, cost, and time to market. For more information, please visit our Web site at www.kabenresearch.com.