A 520 pJ/pulse IR-UWB radar for short range object detection

This paper presents a low power, low complexity IR-UWB radar transceiver for short range object detection. The transceiver provides robustness against false alarms without increasing power consumption, chip size, or complexity. The receiver (RX) and the transmitter (TX) dissipate only 50 pJ/pulse and 470 pJ/pulse under a 1.2V supply, respectively. The measured TX pulse spectrum, -58 dBm maximum power, complies with the FCC spectral mask and shows 1 GHz bandwidth with 4 GHz center frequency. The measured sensitivity of the RX is -45 dBm, and the RX is fully functional to detect an object in the range of 0.45 ~ 1.2 m. The die size of the IR-UWB transceiver implemented in a 0.13 um CMOS process is 2.1 mm².