The large bandwidth of the 60 GHz frequency band enables wireless short-range applications with data rates of several Gbit/s. The German project EASY-A has focused on early prototype implementations for selected applications, although no generally accepted 60 GHz standard has been available at the time. The implementations are based on application-oriented physical layer designs and link-budget investigations that account for the scenario-specific channel characteristics and for different integration technologies. This paper discusses the results of these investigations and details the hardware implementation of the digital baseband processing that relies on considerable parallelization. The link-budget results show that SiGe technology allows for 1 Gbit/s at a range of 3.5 m in non-line-of-sight environments, while up to 10 Gbit/s are feasible at more than 1 m in case of strong line of sight.
