A 1 V 250 KPPS 90 NM CMOS pulse based transceiver for CM-range wireless communication

We present a baseband pulse based transceiver for centimeter range wireless communication. It is implemented in 90 nm CMOS technology and uses a 0.5 cm² on board inductor as antenna to reduce cost and minimize size. All the timing information is extracted from the incoming pulse sequence by means of an on-chip Phase Locked Loop whose output is used to duty cycle the receiver and drive the transmitter, obviating the need for an on board quartz reference. The complete system integrates front end, antenna and clock-recovery in a single module with cm2 size. At 250 Kpps, the transceiver consumes 257 muW (6 muW TX, 181muW RX, 70 muW PLL), corresponding to an energy consumption of InJ/pulse.