A 401-406 MHz Wireless Transceiver Analogue Front-End for Medical Implantable Applications

This work presents a wireless 401-406 MHz on-off keying (OOK) transceiver (TRX) analogue front-end for medical implantable communication systems (MICS). The transmitter (TX) part consists of a voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO), a fractional-N phase-locked loop (PLL) and an output buffer for OOK modulation. The receiver (RX) front-end implemented based on a low intermediate-frequency (IF) homodyne RX architecture comprises a balun low-noise amplifier (LNA), a Gilbert mixer and a variable gain amplifier (VGA). The RX re-uses the signal generated by the TX as its local oscillation (LO) signal. A proof-of-concept circuit prototype has been fabricated in a 180-nm BiCMOS technology. Experimental results show the PLL frequency can be adjusted over the entire MICS band with a frequency resolution of 0.33 MHz. Its phase noise is -100 dBc/Hz at 1-MHz offset frequency. Additionally, the TX exhibits a maximal output power of 4.6 dBm. The complete RX front-end achieves a noise figure below 8.4 dB and a high conversion gain of 75 dB. The TX and RX consume a DC power of 23 mW and 27.5 mW, respectively. The data rate of the whole TRX reaches 1 Mbit/s which is the highest among the state-of-the-art MICS TRXs.

[1]  Frank Ellinger,et al.  A dual band FMCW radar receiver with integrated active balun and baseband AGC loop , 2017, 2017 IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems (ISCAS).

[2]  P.D. Bradley,et al.  An ultra low power, high performance Medical Implant Communication System (MICS) transceiver for implantable devices , 2006, 2006 IEEE Biomedical Circuits and Systems Conference.

[3]  Frank Ellinger,et al.  Design of a multi-band FMCW radar module , 2013, 2013 10th Workshop on Positioning, Navigation and Communication (WPNC).

[4]  Frank Ellinger,et al.  Integrated multi-band fractional-N PLL for FMCW radar systems at 2.4 and 5.8GHz , 2014, 2014 10th Conference on Ph.D. Research in Microelectronics and Electronics (PRIME).

[5]  Frank Ellinger,et al.  Fractional-N PLL optimization for highly linear wideband chirp generation for FMCW radars , 2015, 2015 German Microwave Conference.

[6]  G. Palmisano,et al.  A 400-MHz CMOS radio front-end for ultra low-power medical implantable applications , 2009, 2009 Proceedings of ESSCIRC.

[7]  Youngsoo Shin,et al.  Analysis and optimization of gate leakage current of power gating circuits , 2006, Asia and South Pacific Conference on Design Automation, 2006..

[8]  Frank Ellinger,et al.  A 193-nW Wake-Up Receiver Achieving -84.5-dBm Sensitivity For Green Wireless Communications , 2021, IEEE Transactions on Green Communications and Networking.

[9]  Z. Wang,et al.  MICS transceivers: regulatory standards and applications [medical implant communications service] , 2005, Proceedings. IEEE SoutheastCon, 2005..

[10]  Frank Ellinger,et al.  A 55 dB range gain interpolating variable gain amplifier with improved offset cancellation , 2016, 2016 12th Conference on Ph.D. Research in Microelectronics and Electronics (PRIME).

[11]  Frank Ellinger,et al.  Techniques for maximizing input handling and improving linearity of gain interpolating VGAs , 2015, 2015 11th Conference on Ph.D. Research in Microelectronics and Electronics (PRIME).

[12]  Frank Ellinger,et al.  A scalable synchronous reload technique for wide division range multi modulus dividers , 2015, 2015 IEEE International Conference on Electronics, Circuits, and Systems (ICECS).