Low power non-coherent ook receiver utilizing weak inversion and RF energy scavenging for demodulation

The lossy nature of the rectification circuitry is the main source of performance degradation in a non-coherent On-Off Keyed (OOK) receiver. Through the optimization of a multi-stage LNA design operating in weak inversion and the use of a power matched voltage doubler circuit, a 1.0 V, 1.5 mW low power OOK receiver is fabricated using 0.13 um CMOS technology. To facilitate data transfer at up to 100 m from a 1 mW source, the chip receives a 1 Mbps RF signal with a sensitivity of -90 dBm while consuming just 1.5 nJ/bit. The receiver operates without the addition of any external passives consuming just 1 mm² of die area.