A fully differential IR-UWB front-end for noncoherent communication and localization

This paper presents a 3.1-10.6 GHz ultra-wideband transmitter/receiver chipset for non-coherent communication and localization applications. Its fully differential topology fits promising balanced UWB antennas, and eases packaging. The transmitter uses a cross-coupled oscillator core transiently turned on by a current spike. It consumes 6 mW at 100 MHz impulse repetion rate, including the on-chip pulse shaping circuitry. The energy-detecting receiver front-end combines a fully differential low noise amplifier (LNA), a differential squaring circuit, low pass filters and buffers. The complete receiver IC dissipates 108 mW, almost independent of the applied impulse rate. Transmit and receive ICs are mounted chip-on-board at the feedpoints of dipole fed circular slot antennas. The measurement results suggest communication speeds up to 700 MBaud using on-off keying.