Reconfigurable dual mode IEEE 802.15.4 digital baseband receiver for diverse IoT applications

IEEE 802.15.4 takes a center stage in IoT as Low-Rate Wireless Personal Area Networks(LR-WPANs). The standard specifies Offset Quadrature Phase Shift Keying Physical Layer (O-QPSK PHY) with half-sine pulse shaping which can be either categorized under the class of M-ary PSK signals (QPSK signal with offset) or as Minimum Shift Keying (MSK) signal. M-ary PSK demodulation requires perfect carrier synchronization and has minimal error. MSK signals which falls under Continuous Phase Frequency Shift Keying can be demodulated non-coherently but error performance is not as good. In our paper, this dual nature of IEEE 802.15.4 PHY is exploited to propose a dual mode receiver comprising of QPSK demodulator chain and MSK demodulator chain as a single system on chip. The mode can be configured manually depending on the type of application or based on feedback from a Signal to Noise (SNR) indicator employed in the proposed receiver. M-ary PSK chain is selected for lower SNRs and MSK for higher SNRs. Each of these properties are analyzed in detail for both demodulator chains and we go on to prove that MSK detection can be used for low power, low complex and low latency while QPSK detection is employed for minimal error.