Low-Power 2.4-GHz Transceiver With Passive RX Front-End and 400-mV Supply

Author

Cook, Ben W. ; Berny, Axel ; Molnar, Alyosha ; Lanzisera, Steven ; Pister, Kristofer S J

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. Eng. & Comput. Sci., California Univ., Berkeley, CA

Volume

41

Issue

12

fYear

2006

Firstpage

2757

Lastpage

2766

Abstract

An ultra low power 2.4-GHz transceiver targeting wireless sensor network applications is presented. The receiver front-end is fully passive, utilizing an integrated resonant matching network to achieve voltage gain and interface directly to a passive mixer. The receiver achieves a 7-dB noise figure and -7.5-dBm IIP3 while consuming 330 muW from a 400-mV supply. The binary FSK transmitter delivers 300 muW to a balanced 50-Omega load with 30% overall efficiency and 45% power amplifier (PA) efficiency. Performance of the receiver topology is analyzed and simple expressions for the gain and noise figure of both the passive mixer and matching network are derived. An analysis of passive mixer input impedance reveals the potential to reject interferers at the mixer input with characteristics similar to an extremely high-Q parallel LC filter centered at the switching frequency

Keywords

CMOS integrated circuits; Q-factor; UHF mixers; UHF power amplifiers; frequency shift keying; low-power electronics; transceivers; wireless sensor networks; 2.4 GHz; 300 muW; 330 muW; 400 mV; 50 ohm; 7 dB; RF CMOS; binary FSK transmitter; high-Q parallel LC filter; integrated resonant matching network; low-power RF; low-power radio; low-power transceiver; passive RX front-end; passive mixer; power amplifier; receiver front-end; switching frequency; wireless sensor network applications; Frequency shift keying; Network topology; Noise figure; Performance analysis; Power amplifiers; Resonance; Transceivers; Transmitters; Voltage; Wireless sensor networks; Low-power radio; RF CMOS; Smart Dust; low-power RF; passive gain; passive mixer; sensor network;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Solid-State Circuits, IEEE Journal of

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9200

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/JSSC.2006.884801

Filename

4014606