A 500mW 5Mbps ULP super-regenerative RF front-end

This paper presents an ultra low power superregenerative RF front-end for wireless body area network (WBAN) applications. The RF front-end operates in the 2.36-2.4 GHz medical BAN and 2.4-2.485 GHz ISM bands, and consumes 500 μW. It supports OOK modulation at high data rates ranging from 1-5 Mbps. It achieves a sensitivity of -67 dBm at a BER of 10^-3. The combination of digital and analog quench generation and RF front-end optimization provides ultra-low power consumption at high data rates. The RF front end is implemented in a 90 nm CMOS technology and is packaged in a QFN56 package.