Sub-10 µW CMOS wake-up receiver IP for green SoC designs

Minimizing waste of resources by reduction of battery replacements in mobile smart objects gives an electronic system a green attribute. Wireless communication is mandatory for modern smart systems. As the receiver's power consumption dominates the total power budget, novel power reduction techniques are recommended. This paper proposes an ultra-low power UHF wake-up receiver IP in a 130 nm CMOS technology. The power consumption is scalable between 3 μW and 28 μW. In contrast to common polling receivers with reaction times of more than 1 second, this novel fully integrated 868 MHz wake-up receiver depicts reaction times between 30 ms and 484 ms. The core size is 1.0 mm2. The sensitivity is -83 dBm. Adding such an ultra-low power IP to a SoC circuit, a quick radio interface for remote access on demand is provided and enables a broad variety of innovative applications: remote sensor readout, wireless body area networks, wireless authentification, localisation and asset tracking in logistics and health-care.