A low-power digitally programmable impulse radio ultra wideband transmitter with pulse shape control

This paper presents a digitally programmable transmitter for ultra-wideband impulse radio using on-off keying modulation scheme. The circuit can generate pulse widths ranging from 600 ps to 1.5 ns that can be spectrally centered at frequencies ranging from 3.9 GHz to 9.3 GHz. The system allows for digital control of the transmitted power spectrum shape in order to deal with varying transmission environments. The entire transmitter is power cycled, operating from a 1.2 V supply, and consuming a simulated power as low as 0.9 mW at a 10 Mbps data rate.