A 19μW, 100kbps Impulse Radio transceiver for body-area-networks

In this paper we present the design and measured results of a duty-cycled, non-coherent Impulse Radio transceiver. The designed transceiver was measured to consume only 19μW at a data-rate of 100kbps. The design gives a BER of 10^-5 and works for a range of 2.5m at an average Rx-sensitivity of -81dBm, making it useful for low-power short-range wireless communication systems such as body area networks. The transceiver enables both OOK and BPSK schemes and can be configured to use a pseudo-coherent self-correlated signature detection and generation mechanism. This added functionality helps distinguish different types of pulses such as timing and data-pulses in real time. The transceiver was designed in a 90nm CMOS process and occupies 2.3mm² area.