Power Consumption of Integrated Low-Power Receivers

With the advent of Internet of Things (IoT) it has become clear that radio-frequency (RF) designers have to be aware of power constraints, e.g., in the design of simplistic ultra-low power receivers often used as wake-up radios (WuRs). The objective of this work, one of the first systematic studies of power bounds for RF-systems, is to provide an overview and intuitive feel for how power consumption and sensitivity relates for low-power receivers. This was done by setting up basic circuit schematics for different radio receiver architectures to find analytical expressions for their output signal-to-noise ratio including power consumption, bandwidth, sensitivity, and carrier frequency. The analytical expressions and optimizations of the circuits give us relations between dc-energy-per-bit and receiver sensitivity, which can be compared to recent published low-power receivers. The parameter set used in the analysis is meant to reflect typical values for an integrated 90 nm complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor fabrication processes, and typical small sized RF lumped components.

[1]  S. A. Maas,et al.  Design and performance of a planar star mixer , 1993 .

[2]  Thomas H. Lee,et al.  The Design of CMOS Radio-Frequency Integrated Circuits: RF CIRCUITS THROUGH THE AGES , 2003 .

[3]  Thomas H. Lee.  CMOS RF Integrated Circuits: Past, Present and Future (Invited) , 1999, 1999 29th European Microwave Conference.

[4]  C. Dehollain,et al.  A low-power 1GHz super-regenerative transceiver with time-shared PLL control , 2000, Proceedings of the 26th European Solid-State Circuits Conference.

[5]  Jan M. Rabaey,et al.  PicoRadio Supports Ad Hoc Ultra-Low Power Wireless Networking , 2000, Computer.

[6]  M. Tiebout,et al.  Low-power low-phase-noise differentially tuned quadrature VCO design in standard CMOS , 2001, IEEE J. Solid State Circuits.

[7]  M. Declercq,et al.  A low-power CMOS super-regenerative receiver at 1 GHz , 2001, IEEE J. Solid State Circuits.

[8]  B. Otis,et al.  Super-Regenerative Transceiver for Wireless Sensor Networks , 2004 .

[9]  Joseph A. Paradiso,et al.  Energy scavenging for mobile and wireless electronics , 2005, IEEE Pervasive Computing.

[10]  C. Dehollain,et al.  Remotely powered addressable UHF RFID integrated system , 2005, IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits.

[11]  R. Castello,et al.  Single-Stage Low-Power Quadrature RF Receiver Front-End: The LMV Cell , 2006, IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits.

[12]  L.E. Larson,et al.  Passive RF Receiver Design for Wireless Sensor Networks , 2007, 2007 IEEE/MTT-S International Microwave Symposium.

[13]  Gary Breed.  Basic Principles of Electrically Small Antennas , 2007 .

[14]  A. Chandrakasan,et al.  An Energy-Efficient OOK Transceiver for Wireless Sensor Networks , 2007, IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits.

[15]  M.P. Flynn,et al.  A Fully Integrated Auto-Calibrated Super-Regenerative Receiver in 0.13-$\mu{\hbox {m}}$ CMOS , 2007, IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits.

[16]  Barrie Gilbert,et al.  A precise four-quadrant multiplier with subnanosecond response , 1968, IEEE Solid-State Circuits Newsletter.

[17]  Anantha Chandrakasan,et al.  A 350μW CMOS MSK transmitter and 400μW OOK super-regenerative receiver for Medical Implant Communications , 2009, 2008 IEEE Symposium on VLSI Circuits.

[18]  Christofer Toumazou,et al.  A 1 V Wireless Transceiver for an Ultra-Low-Power SoC for Biotelemetry Applications , 2008, IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits.

[19]  S. Gambini,et al.  A 52 $\mu$ W Wake-Up Receiver With $-$ 72 dBm Sensitivity Using an Uncertain-IF Architecture , 2009, IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits.

[20]  Edgar Sánchez-Sinencio,et al.  RF Oscillator Based on a Passive RC Bandpass Filter , 2009, IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits.

[21]  Andrea Bevilacqua,et al.  An Energy-Detector for Noncoherent Impulse-Radio UWB Receivers , 2009, IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems I: Regular Papers.

[22]  Denis C. Daly,et al.  A pulsed UWB receiver SoC for insect motion control , 2009, 2009 IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference - Digest of Technical Papers.

[23]  J. Jacob Wikner,et al.  Power consumption of analog circuits: a tutorial , 2010 .

[24]  Jim Wight,et al.  On-Die Synthesized Inductors: Boon or Bane? , 2010, IEEE Microwave Magazine.

[25]  Xiaoyan Wang,et al.  A 2.4GHz/915MHz 51µW wake-up receiver with offset and noise suppression , 2010, 2010 IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference - (ISSCC).

[26]  Kartikeya Mayaram,et al.  An Ultralow-Power Receiver for Wireless Sensor Networks , 2010, IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits.

[27]  Marco Crepaldi,et al.  An Ultra-Low-Power interference-robust IR-UWB transceiver chipset using self-synchronizing OOK modulation , 2010, 2010 IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference - (ISSCC).

[28]  Hoi-Jun Yoo,et al.  A low energy injection-locked FSK transceiver with frequency-to-amplitude conversion for body sensor applications , 2010, 2010 Symposium on VLSI Circuits.

[29]  Michiel Steyaert,et al.  Energy Supply and ULP Detection Circuits for an RFID Localization System in 130 nm CMOS , 2010, IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits.

[30]  Thomas Herndl,et al.  A 2.4µW Wake-up Receiver for wireless sensor nodes with −71dBm sensitivity , 2011, 2011 IEEE International Symposium of Circuits and Systems (ISCAS).

[31]  Won-Young Jung,et al.  Low-Capacitance Low-Voltage Triggered SCR ESD Clamp Using nMOS With Asymmetric Drain for RF ICs , 2011, IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques.

[32]  Andrea Bevilacqua,et al.  A 5 Mb/s UWB-IR Transceiver Front-End for Wireless Sensor Networks in 0.13 $\mu{\hbox{m}}$ CMOS , 2011, IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits.

[33]  Emil Nilsson,et al.  Envelope detector sensitivity and blocking characteristics , 2011, 2011 20th European Conference on Circuit Theory and Design (ECCTD).

[34]  Ove Edfors,et al.  DCW-MAC: An Energy Efficient Medium Access Scheme Using Duty-Cycled Low-Power Wake-Up Receivers , 2011, 2011 IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC Fall).

[35]  Xin Liu,et al.  A 2.4/5.8 GHz 10 μW wake-up receiver with −65/−50 dBm sensitivity using direct active rf detection , 2012, 2012 IEEE Asian Solid State Circuits Conference (A-SSCC).

[36]  Sang-Gyu Park,et al.  An Ultra Low-Power CMOS Transceiver Using Various Low-Power Techniques for LR-WPAN Applications , 2012, IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems I: Regular Papers.

[37]  N. E. Roberts,et al.  A 98nW wake-up radio for wireless body area networks , 2012, 2012 IEEE Radio Frequency Integrated Circuits Symposium.

[38]  Kihyun Kim,et al.  Low-Power CMOS Super-Regenerative Receiver With a Digitally Self-Quenching Loop , 2012, IEEE Microwave and Wireless Components Letters.

[39]  Emil Nilsson,et al.  Ultra Low Power Wake-Up Radio Using Envelope Detector and Transmission Line Voltage Transformer , 2013, IEEE Journal on Emerging and Selected Topics in Circuits and Systems.

[40]  A. Heragu,et al.  A Low Power BAW Resonator Based 2.4-GHz Receiver With Bandwidth Tunable Channel Selection Filter at RF , 2013, IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits.