Digital receiver architectures for the IEEE 802.15.4 standard

This paper describes an analysis of different digital radio receiver architectures for the IEEE 802.15.4 standard, focusing on the analog-to-digital converter (ADC). This standard has been developed for low bit-rate, low-power wireless personal area networks (WPAN). The choice of the best architecture depends on many factors, among which the power consumption, the integration suitability, the image rejection, the flicker and quantization noise, etc. There are mainly three basic architectures suitable for a low-power implementation: a) the direct conversion, b) the low-IF with low-pass ΔΣ ADC and c) the low-IF with quadrature bandpass ΔΣ ADC. Each of these architecture is analyzed in order to identify the trade-offs and select the most suitable for the IEEE 802.15.4 standard.