Development of a high-gain high-isolation low-power receiver for wireless body area sensor network application system

This study presents a high power conversion gain (CG), excellent isolation and low power consumption receiver for wireless body sensor network application system utilizing TSMC 0.18 μm CMOS technology with chip size only 1.12 mm × 0.98 mm. The high gain and low power receiver which comprises variable gain low noise amplifier (VGLNA) and down-conversion mixer, the VGLNA with current-reused and RC feedback techniques to improve the power consumption and stable the bias voltage, and the self-biased technique is applied to the VGA stage for reduction of the voltage supply. Otherwise, the down-conversion mixer is based on the Gilbert cell architecture which employs output load with RC in parallel structure, current-bleeding and source-degeneration to enhance the power conversion gain (CG) and linearity. The implemented receiver exhibits high CG of 17.6 dB, low power consumption of 20 mW and excellent isolation of -68 dB is demonstrated in this study.