Impulse based range-gated UWB wireless transceiver IC in 90nm CMOS for medical sensing applications and communications

This paper presents a new impulse based ultra-wide band (UWB) transceiver system designed in 90 nm CMOS technology for UWB medical radar sensing and communication applications. The design is targeting for human heart motion detection and short range data communications. The transmitter is composed of a simple on-off keying (OOK) modulated impulse generator and a variable gain-controlled amplifier (VGA) at the transmitter. The generated pulse width can be adjusted. The receiver operating in the radar mode is composed of a simple low noise amplifier, a mixer, and an analog-to-digital converter operating in the radar mode. The range gate control design allows the receiver gather maximum power reflection from the objects within the expected range and minimizes the noise. The proposed impulse based UWB transceiver works under a 1.2 V power supply and the transmitter provides an output transmitting pulses of 300 mV to 50 Omega load. The fully integrated UWB transceiver occupies a core area of 0.3 mm². The transceiver works in UWB band of 3.1-6 GHz and consumes an average power of 5.32 mW and 12.69 mW for simulations of radar sensing and communications, respectively.