RF: Will it ever be plug-in IP?

The article examines whether reusing silicon intellectual property (IP) is possible to meet schedules and maintain reasonable design complexity, as system on chip (SOC) for mobile devices integrate radio circuits. At stake in these examination is a large fraction of the die area in the mobile-system SOC which occurs because radios tend to be large and because the advanced handset will require lots of radios on one SOC. The examination showed that SOC development depends on IP reusability and that radio frequency (RF) circuitry is notoriously hard to reuse for some very compelling reasons. It also found that the reuse of third-party blocks is likely to be difficult and slow to emerge.