A High-Resolution UWB IR Superregenerative Receiver Front End With an SRD Quench Shaper

Author

Moncunill-Geniz, F. Xavier ; Bonet-Dalmau, Jordi ; Palà-Schönwälder, Pere ; Águila-López, Francisco Del ; Giralt-Mas, Rosa

Author_Institution

Dept. of Signal Theor. & Commun., Univ. Politec. de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain

Volume

59

Issue

2

fYear

2012

Firstpage

93

Lastpage

97

Abstract

We present a simple receiver front end that makes use of the baseband superregeneration principle to detect ultrawideband (UWB) impulse radio signals. The UWB antenna is directly connected to the core circuit consisting of a resistor-capacitor (RC) network coupled to a negative resistance that varies under the control of an external quench generator. Due to a step-recovery-diode quench shaper, 50-ps time-domain sensitivity windows are generated that filter the received pulses and reject noise and interference. The circuit achieves high gain, exhibits automatic gain control, and directly demodulates binary phase modulations.

Keywords

RC circuits; automatic gain control; charge storage diodes; demodulation; filtering theory; phase modulation; radiofrequency interference; signal detection; ultra wideband antennas; ultra wideband communication; UWB IR superregenerative receiver front end; UWB antenna; automatic gain control; baseband superregeneration principle; binary phase modulation demodulation; external quench generator; interference rejection; negative resistance; noise rejection; pulse filtering; resistor-capacitor network; step-recovery-diode quench shaper; time 50 ps; time-domain sensitivity windows; ultrawideband impulse radio signal detection; Antenna measurements; Antennas; Binary phase shift keying; Generators; Receivers; Sensitivity; Circuit stability; impulse radio (IR); low-power design; radio receivers; step recovery diode (SRD); superregenerative receiver; ultrawideband (UWB) communication;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Circuits and Systems II: Express Briefs, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1549-7747

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/TCSII.2012.2184373

Filename

6145626