IEEE Solid-States Circuits Magazine - Summer 2022 - 64

Mixed-signal transceivers will be particularly
instrumental in enabling future hybrid and
digital beamforming systems, owing to their
compact designs.
flexible, wideband, direct-to-digital
operation. Such operation enables
bits-to-RF/RF-to-bits operation in the RF
spectrum or can serve as a direct-digital
intermediate-frequency transceiver
for mm-wave applications. Work
on mixed-signal TXs has progressed
directly into the mm-wave spectrum
using embedded frequency multipliers.
Significantly less work has
been done on mixed-signal RX, and
both fields are ripe with opportunities
as future generations of communications
systems place emphasis
on wider band operation at a higher
frequency. Mixed-signal transceivers
will be particularly instrumental in
enabling future hybrid and digital
beamforming systems, owing to
their compact designs. The potential
for growth in mixed-signal transceivers
does seem truly limitless.
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About the Author
Jeffrey Walling (jswalling@vt.edu)
received his B.S. degree from the University
of South Florida, Tampa, Florida,
and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees
from the University of Washington,
Seattle. In 2010, he became an assistant
professor at Rutgers University
and then an associate professor at the
University of Utah. He is now an associate
professor of electrical and computer
engineering with Virginia Tech,
Blacksburg, Virginia, 24060, USA. His
current research interests include RF,
mm-wave, and THz transceivers for
next-generation communications. He
is a Senior Member of IEEE.
64 SUMMER 2022
IEEE SOLID-STATE CIRCUITS MAGAZINE
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor_count https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor_count
IEEE Solid-States Circuits Magazine - Summer 2022

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