Continium Technologies designs single-chip wireless transceivers for 5G/6G base stations, focusing on sub-6GHz and mmWave spectrums. Their IC products deliver high bandwidth and signal quality while minimizing power consumption and size.
Funding
Funding not disclosed
Founders
Product
Problem
Current wireless base station receiver architectures struggle to meet the increasing demands for higher bandwidth and resolution in 5G/6G communication systems. Traditional heterodyne architectures using pipeline ADCs face limitations in speed and resolution due to the sampling process and the need for high-order analog filtering. These limitations hinder the development of base stations supporting very high bandwidth at low power dissipation and small form factors.
Solution
Continium Technologies provides ASIC and IP cores for data converters, specifically focusing on continuous-time bandpass sigma-delta (CTSD) ADCs, enabling a new wireless receiver architecture for 5G/6G base stations. Their solution replaces the second mixer stage in traditional heterodyne architectures with a CTSD ADC, digitizing the signal before down-mixing in the digital domain. This approach eliminates the need for high-order analog filtering and overcomes the speed and resolution limitations of pipeline ADCs. The CTSD ADC architecture allows for higher signal bandwidth and resolution while reducing power consumption and enabling smaller form factors for base station transceivers.
Target Audience
The primary target audience includes manufacturers of 5G/6G base stations, telecommunications companies, and other applications where extreme performance, high energy efficiency, or low cost data converters are required.
Features
- Continuous-time bandpass sigma-delta (CTSD) ADC design for direct RF signal digitizing
- High bandwidth (400-500MHz) and resolution (16bit) data conversion
- Integration of analog filter, digital-to-analog converter, internal quantizer, and digital decimation filter
- Expertise in CMOS and BiCMOS technologies down to 22nm technology nodes
- Design services for custom ASIC products, including semiconductor process technology selection and ASIC package selection
- Digital and Logic Circuit design: SPI/I2C-Interface, Digital Post-processing, Digital Calibration and Digital Filter
- Design Database conversion and post-processing like Netlist converter/translator