An Ultra-Low-Power Energy-Efficient Dual-Mode Wake-Up Receiver

An ultra-low-power wake-up receiver is proposed to reduce the energy consumption through adoption of two wake-up modes of operation with different power dissipations and detection bandwidths. During the Monitoring (MO) mode, the start frame bits are received at a data rate of 10 kbps, while during the Identifier (ID) mode the remaining wake-up pattern is transmitted at 200 kbps. By lowering the gain of the front-end amplifier in the MO mode the power dissipation is reduced, which in turn causes an increase in the overall noise figure of the receiver. However, adequate sensitivity is maintained by intentionally lowering the data rate as well as the detection bandwidth of the receiver. The proposed wake-up receiver is designed and fabricated in IBM 130 nm technology with a core size of about 0.2 mm² for the target frequency range of 902-928 MHz. The measured results show that the proposed dual-mode receiver achieves a sensitivity of -78.5 dBm and -75 dBm while dissipating an average power of 16.4 μW and 22.9 μW during MO and ID modes, respectively.