We are all hearing that 5G is the future, 5G cities and first 5G trials. Millimeter frequency band will be utilized for 5G since it enables huge bandwidth and relatively less attenuation. Huge bandwidth leads to high data rate and fortraditional hardware approaches, it is becoming hard to meet the challenges. Huge volume of data must be processed in near real time, otherwise we get nothing.
There exist silicon hardware solutions in the market for 4-6 GHz bandwidth for center frequencies typically lower than 10 Ghz. Millimeter wave is a new area. There will be massive MIMO. Thus silicon-radar chip solutions for millimeter wave will enable 5G. Current trend is moving the digitization closer to the RF front end. Smart sampling methods other than Nyquist sampling, FPGA integration are some approaches used in silicon transceivers.
It seems that Ericsson and IBM Research has achieved a breakthrough in this realm. It seems that they cobtribute to the efforts making the 5G transceiver have smaller footprint in space ans energy
[•]IBM Research Wins ISSCC Lewis Winner Award for 4th Time in 15 Years