A 2-Gb/s 130-nm CMOS RF-Correlation-Based IR-UWB Transceiver Front-End

This paper presents a carrierless RF-correlation-based impulse radio ultra-wideband transceiver (TRX) front-end in a 130-nm CMOS process. Timing synchronization and coherent demodulation are implemented directly in the RF domain, targeting applications such as short-range energy-efficient wireless communication at gigabit/second data rates. The 6-10-GHz band is exploited to achieve higher data rate. Binary phase-shift keying modulated impulse is generated by edge combining the delayed clock signal at a lower frequency of 2 GHz to avoid a more power-hungry phase-locked loop at higher frequency (e.g., 8 GHz). An on-chip pulse shaper inside the pulse generator is designed to provide filtering for an edge-combined signal to comply with the Federal Communications Commission spectrum emission mask. In order to achieve 25-ps delay accuracy and 500-ps delay range for the proposed two-step RF synchronization, a template-based digital delay generation scheme is proposed, which delays the locally generated trigger pulse instead of the wideband pulse itself. Occupying 6.4 mm² of chip area, the TRX achieves a maximum data rate of 2 Gb/s and a receiver (RX) sensitivity of -64 dBm with a bit error rate of 10^-5, while requiring only 51.5 pJ/pulse in the transmitter mode and 72.9 pJ/pulse in the RX mode.