Low power synchronization for wireless sensor network modems

A simplification of synchronization requirements is necessary to meet the low power goals of wireless sensor networks (WSNs). Simply scaling existing synchronization systems to WSN data rates consumes more power than the entire allotted node budget. In this work, simplification of synchronization requirements was achieved through system level design of modulation scheme, data rate, packet length, and clock accuracy. Analog and digital implementations of the resulting synchronization functions are explored. A digital implementation was chosen because it requires a smaller header length and therefore reduces system energy consumption. The chosen scheme achieves better than 1e^-4 BER at 13 dB SNR, an implementation loss of 1.6 dB over the ideal detection case, while consuming under 300 μW.