The Wireless Personal Area Network (WPAN)-standardized by the IEEE 802.15 WG-addresses the delivery of information over relatively short distances ("Piconet") among relatively few participants. One of the hottest areas of wireless communication, ultra-high data rate wireless systems are in high demand thanks to the emergence of a multitude of multimedia applications.

The availability of several GHz bandwidth unlicensed ISM bands in the 60GHz spectrum represents a great opportunity for WPAN. The 60GHz spectrum has been selected as the most appropriate band to meet the requirements of the emerging IEEE 802.15.3c standard for WPAN applications-and to overcome the current limitations of alternative solution such as 802.11n and UWB. The demand for the ultra-high data rate wireless capability of suchsystems is increasing daily, thanks to the emergence of many multimedia applications and ultra-high speed interconnect standards such HDMI 1.3, Display Port, UDI, and PCI-e technologies.

A GEDC team recently established a new world record for the highest data rate transmitted wirelessly at 60GHz. GEDC researchers achieved a peak data transfer rate of 15 Gigabit/s at a distance of 1 meter, 10 Gigabit/s at a distance of 2 meters and 5 Gigabit/s at a distance of 5 meters. In addition, the team is also focused on research efforts on robustness-enhancement architecturedevelopment (human shadowing resistance, improved bit-error-rate to 10e-12).

The research efforts, led by Dr. Stephane Pinel and Prof. Joy Laskar, have been focused on the development of CMOS fully integrated 60GHz multi-gigabit radio chips, co-designed with an innovative, low-cost, organic-based 3D integrated module technology.

Thanks to the participation of numerous industrial partners, the multi-gigabit wireless research at GEDC has received major investments in resources and infrastructure, such as fully integrated S-parameter/noise/load-pull characterization system from 2GHz up to 110GHz.