Low-power sensor node with addressable wake-up on-demand capability

The ambition to equip more and more consumer products with sensor intelligence and communication capability entails two major demands for wireless sensor nodes. First, they have to operate for several years. Second, they must be permanently accessible for communication requests. These two demands are in contrast to each other. Regarding a transceiver in permanent receiving mode, the power consumption of a few milliwatts implicates a lifetime in the order of days for a common battery. Addressing the challenge to solve these conflicts, we present a new wake-up receiver approach in this paper. Our solution consumes 5.6 μW of power while listening for a communication request. Furthermore, it possesses a 16-bit address coding for specific WSN wake-up. And moreover, an improved impedance matching with a high sensitivity improves the wake-up distance significantly to 40 m at +10 dBm output power. This approach empowers wireless sensor nodes for the first time to be usable for a wide range of applications.

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