On the Energy Efficiency of Wireless Transceivers

Battery life-time is an important performance metric for many wireless networks and there is a growing need to improve the life-time of these networks. However, system analysis is complicated by the fact that the transceiver electronics energy cost is non-negligible and often has a major impact on the battery life. This paper develops a simple metric to evaluate the energy cost of both communication protocols and circuit electronics. This metric treats the electronics energy as an overhead cost on top of the Eb/No requirement. This enables the joint optimization of system and circuit parameters for energy limited wireless transceivers with arbitrary communication protocols.