Implementation and verification of a new impulse UWB radio system with HF/UHF remote-powering for passive wireless memory tags

In this paper, we present for the first time a complete impulse UWB radio system implementation for remotely-powered wireless memory tag applications. A narrow-band signal, either 13.56 MHz or 900 MHz, is used for remote-powering, and the communication link is based on impulse UWB communication at 7.9 GHz centre frequency. A fully integrated transceiver optimised for tags has been implemented and used also in the reader/writer device. The air-interface of the remotely-powered transceiver operates up to 112 Mbit/s with ultra-low energy consumption per bit (Tx mode: 87 pJ/bit, Rx mode: 80 pJ/bit). A complete system demonstrator including a remotely-powered 64-Mbit memory tag has been built to test and verify the concept. The results confirm the feasibility of solely remotely-powered wireless memory tags.