System study of a 60 GHz wireless-powered monolithic sensor system

State-of-the-art batteryless wireless sensors have separate modules for sensing and energy scavenging. Such separation increases the size and cost of sensors and limits their robustness. To overcome these limitations, we propose a 60 GHz wireless sensor system, which we call the PREMISS system, based on monolithic sensors with on chip sensing, tranceiving, integrated antenna and energy scavenging. In the PREMISS system, a high-power central controller transmits RF energy and information to many low-power low-cost sensors via pencil beams and receive and detect the information from these sensors. In this paper, we present a system study on the PREMISS system highlighting design challenges and practical implementation considerations. From the link budget calculation, we show that in the PREMISS system, a signal to noise ratio of 17 dB at the central controller receiver may be achieved from a sensor 5 meters away. In addition, we also identified that one key challenges in the PREMISS system is the design of good efficiency rectifiers for input power and voltage levels far below those in state-of-the-art 2.4 GHz systems.