0.15-nJ/b 3–5-GHz IR-UWB System With Spectrum Tunable Transmitter and Merged-Correlator Noncoherent Receiver

Carrierless impulse radio ultra-wideband (IR-UWB) radios have attracted significant research interest due to their low system complexity and power consumption. Unfortunately, IR-UWB systems suffer from the difficulty in controlling the transmitted spectral mask because of process, voltage, and temperature variations. In this paper, a monolithic 3-5-GHz IR-UWB transceiver is presented that integrates both amplitude and spectrum tunability, thereby providing adaptable spectral characteristics for different data rate transmission. The noncoherent receiver employs a simplified low-power merged correlator, eliminating the need for a conventional sample-and-hold circuit. After self-correlation, the demodulated data is digitally synchronized with the baseband clock. The 4 mm² 0.13 μm CMOS transmitter and receiver consume 2.2 and 13.2 mW, respectively at the data rate of 100 Mb/s. The measured peak-to-peak transmitted pulse amplitudes are 240, 170, and 115 mV, with a tunable frequency range of 3.2-4.1 GHz. The receiver exhibits a maximum gain of 70 dB, noise figure of 8.6 dB, and the input 1-dB compression point of -28 dBm . With off-chip antennas, the transceiver achieves a bit error rate of 10^-3 at a sensitivity of -50 dBm.