A low power wearable transceiver for human body communication

This paper reports a low power transceiver designed for wearable medical healthcare system. Based on a novel energy-efficient wideband wireless communication scheme that uses human body as a transmission medium, the transceiver can achieve a maximum 15 Mbps data rate with total receiver sensitivity of -30 dBm. The chip measures only 0.56 mm² and was fabricated in the SMIC 0.18 um 1P6M RF CMOS process. The RX consumes 5 mW and TX dissipates 1 mW with delivering power up to 10 uW, which is suitable for the body area network short range application. Real-time medical information collecting through the human body is fully simulated. Architecture of the chip together with the detail characterizes from its wireless analog front-end are presented.