A 0.24-nJ/bit Super-Regenerative Pulsed UWB Receiver in 0.18-$\mu$m CMOS

Abstract

Abstract-This paper describes a receiver system design for impulse-radio ultra-wideband (IR-UWB) that operates at two carrier frequencies-3.494 and 3.993 GHz-with a 10-Mbps data rate. To reduce the power consumption of the front-end amplifiers, a super-regenerative architecture is used. An integrated circuit, implemented in a CMOS 0.18-m technology and operating with a 1.5-V power supply, exhibits energy consumption of 0.24 nJ/bit with a measured sensitivity of 66 and 61 dBm at 3.494 and 3.993 GHz, respectively, with a BER of . Also included on the integrated circuit is an automatic tuning circuit based on a digital phase-locked loop that is used to set the resonant frequency of the super-regenerative block.Index Terms-Digital phase-locked loop, oscillator, receiver architecture, super-regenerative system, ultra-wideband communication, wireless sensor network.

A Superregenerative QPSK Receiver

“…The main reason for this is their reduced complexity, which is easily translated into low cost and low power consumption. Since its introduction in 1922 [1], this receiver has been successively refined with bitsynchronous designs [2], [3], applications to direct-sequence spread-spectrum [4], and several integrated implementations, such as [3], [5]- [9], have been recently reported.…”

A 3.54 nJ/bit-RX, 0.671 nJ/bit-TX Burst Mode Super-Regenerative UWB Transceiver<newline/> in 0.18-<formula formulatype="inline"><tex Notation="TeX">$\mu{\rm m}$</tex></formula> CMOS

“…Table II shows the performance comparison with state of the art receivers/transceivers. [4], [11] and our proposed transceiver are suitable for implementation in UWB systems. The operating frequency of this receiver is the widest compared to all recent super-regenerative works, covering the lower band (3-5 GHz) of the UWB spectrum.…”

“…The operating frequency of this receiver is the widest compared to all recent super-regenerative works, covering the lower band (3-5 GHz) of the UWB spectrum. Its performance in terms of frequency, energy efficiency and sensitivity is comparable to the super-regenerative receiver in [4] and [11] when normalized to the same data rate, whereas the proposed architecture is simplest as both [4] and [11] require a quench signal since the super-regeneration is based on conventional oscillator technique. Furthermore, the circuit can be optimized more thoroughly to achieve even better energy efficiency for ultra-low power short-range sensor network application.…”

“…High-Q resonator is also required to improve the signal selectivity which mandates either external high-Q passive components [14], [29] or additional tuning circuitry for high-Q bandpass filtering [13]. Recently, oscillatortype based super-regenerative receiver has also been successfully demonstrated for UWB technology [4], [11], [12]. Unlike the narrowband system where the signal selectivity is important, the UWB super-regenerative receiver relies on the incoming UWB signal to determine the start-up envelope of the oscillator and thus achieve signal detection and amplification.…”

A 45 <formula formulatype="inline"><tex Notation="TeX">$\mu$</tex></formula>W Injection-Locked FSK Wake-Up Receiver With Frequency-to-Envelope Conversion for Crystal-Less Wireless Body Area Network

“…First, the superregenerative receiver architecture [4], [19], [20] includes an oscillator which is turned on and off periodically by a quench signal between the front-end amplifier and the envelope detector to provide extraordinary front-end gain with simplicity and low power consumption, but the start-up time detection principle invariably requires a resonant oscillator, such as an LC oscillator, which leads to a power consumption of a few hundred microwatts ( Fig. 1(c)).…”