A low power miniaturized 1.95mm2 fully integrated transceiver with fastPLL mode for IEEE 802.15.4/bluetooth smart and proprietary 2.4GHz applications

This paper presents an ultra-low power miniaturized single chip transceiver operating in the ISM band at 2.4GHz. Targeting low power and minimum die size, while excluding RF-options and minimizing the count of external components for low-cost, asks for appropriate architectural choices to obtain high performance. Fast PLL locking and immediate RX-TX turn-around minimize the consumption overhead at wake-up and turn-around. With a die size of only 1.95mm² in a 90nm standard digital CMOS technology, the receiver achieves a sensitivity of -94.5dBm (1Mbps, BER 10E-3) while consuming only 7.1mA and the transmitter consumes 9.2mA for 0dBm output power. The base-band is compliant with the IEEE 802.15.4 standard, the Bluetooth Smart standard (former Bluetooth low energy BLE) and can be configured for proprietary standards at 2.4GHz, with data-rates up to 3Mbps.