If this software-defined radio works as advertised, IMEC has achieved quite a feat!
“The 130nm CMOS IC covers all standards from 174MHz to 6GHz. IMEC’s wideband software-defined radio (SDR) transceiver, named SCALDIO, is widely programmable to operate with all current and future cellular, WLAN, WPAN, broadcast and positioning standards in the frequency range between the 174MHz and 6GHz. The unique architecture of the multi-mode SDR transceiver has a power consumption and CMOS chip area comparable to current state-of-the-art single mode radios thereby fitting the performance, power and cost requirements for integration into next-generation mass volume mobile devices. Today, state-of-the-art multi-mode terminals have a limited flexibility of two or three standard modes and suffer from increased power consumption and bill-of-material cost due to lack of reuse of building blocks. IMEC realized world’s first functional silicon of a true SDR transceiver IC which can be widely programmed to operate with all present and future standards in the frequency range between the 174MHz and 6GHz. The SDR front-end is highly integrated to save cost and area. The reconfigurable radio front-end IC in 130nm technology uses only 1.2V supply voltage and has an active area of 7.7mm2. Depending on its configuration, the SDR front-end has a power consumption ranging from 60 to 120mA which is comparable to a single-mode radio.”
Link: About IMEC – Press Releases.