A 1 V 5 mA Multimode IEEE 802.15.6/Bluetooth Low-Energy WBAN Transceiver for Biotelemetry Applications

This paper presents a 1 V multi-mode RF transceiver for wireless body area network (WBAN) applications. Operating in the 2.36 GHz Medical Body Area Networks (MBANs) and the 2.4 GHz Industrial, Scientific & Medical (ISM) frequency bands, the transceiver implements rotated differential-phase shift keying (DPSK) and Gaussian filtered frequency shift keying (GFSK) modulation for both IEEE 802.15.6 Narrow Band (NB) and Bluetooth Low-Energy (LE) PHY standards. Also included is a proprietary 900 MHz ISM band transmitter utilizing FSK modulation. The wireless transceiver operates half-duplex, and for IEEE 802.15.6 achieves -104/-96.5 dBm receiver input sensitivity (for 10% packet error rate) at data rates of 121.4/971.4 kbps and -94 dBm for Bluetooth LE (for 0.1% bit error rate) at 1 Mbps. Transmit power up to +3/+5 dBm is achievable for IEEE 802.15.6 and Bluetooth LE respectively. The transceiver consumes 4.8 mA during IEEE 802.15.6 & Bluetooth LE receive, and 4.6 mA during Bluetooth LE transmit at -10 dBm output power, from a 1.0 V supply. For IEE802.15.6 transmission at -10 dBm output power, 5.9 mW is consumed, dropping to 1.7 mW for proprietary 900 MHz transmission. This performance surpasses state-of-the-art power consumption and represents the first published transceiver for the IEEE 802.15.6 NB PHY standard. It is fabricated in a 0.13 μm CMOS technology and occupies approximately 5.9 mm² .