Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd. described what it claimed was the world's first working 77-GHz transceiver. An NEC researcher discussed an ultrawideband device capable of data rates up to 2.88 Gbits/second.

Automotive radar was the target for three of the chips, including the Fujitsu part. Today some high-end cars offer collision detection systems, but they are based on modules that can cost as much as $500 and use multiple CMOS and gallium arsenide components.

Researchers at ISSCC reported on work developing single-chip CMOS devices that could handle automotive short- and long-range radar standards at 24 and 77 GHz. However, the devices were only working prototypes and researchers said many challenges are ahead to get to the ideal $20 CMOS modules that might bring the anti-collision systems to the average car.

Fujitsu's part was the most ambitious. Previous conferences have hosted as many as 17 papers about 60 GHz technology, now being developed for wireless video in HDTVs, but none have reported on transceivers running at 77 GHz, said Yoichi Kawano who presented the Fujitsu paper.

"This is the world's fastest transceiver as far as we know," he said.

The 90-nm device used frequency-modulated continuous wave modulation to calculate the distance and velocity of vehicles in a 150-meter range in front of the user. The device measured 2.1 x 1.2 mm, about a quarter of the size of just the GaAs chips used today. It consumed 920 milliwatts.

Two other papers described transceivers supporting 24-GHz operation targeting side and back mounted radars that operate within a 40-meter range.

Researchers at ST Microelectronics and the University of Catania described a single-chip UWB transceiver made in a 130-nm BiCMOS process. The device uses an antenna attached via a flip-chip package, but STM engineers are trying to develop a new package more suitable for automotive use.

"This market is very new for silicon, so a lot of work has to be done to move from research results to an actual product," said Egidio Ragonese, an assistant professor Catania who presented the paper.

Vipul Jain, a doctoral student at the University of California at Irvine, presented a dual-mode transceiver that could handle short range automotive radar at 24 and 77 GHz. The 180-nm BiCMOS part used shared pulse generators and frequency synthesizers and consumed about 1W.

The architecture could be extended to support long as well as short range radar, Jain said.

NEC focused on high bandwidth for consumer applications in its work on a UWB transceiver that could hit data rates up to 2.88 Gbits/s. The 90-nm device used an 800 MHz analog baseband, frequency hopping and full 16 QAM at band group 3.

Aiko Tanaka, a principal researcher at NEC Corp. noted that the design is an early prototype that still has challenges with noise cancellation and will probably not be put into a test package.

Separately, a Berkeley researcher showed a 60-GHz chip aimed at mobile devices, consuming just 50 milliwatts and compliant with the IEEE 802.15.4a standard. The team is now working on a baseband that will consume just 25 mW.