Low-power low-complexity carrier-based UWB transmitter in 90nm CMOS for wireless biomedical radar sensing applications

This paper presents a low-power low-complexity ultra-wide band (UWB) transmitter designed in 90nm CMOS technology for UWB radar sensing applications. The proposed design is carrier-based and is targeting for motion detection, biomedical imaging, and short range data communications. This non-coherent UWB transmitter, generates on-off modulated signals at different carrier frequency within the 3-10 GHz band. A voltage controlled oscillator generates a modulated pulse consisting of multiple cycles of sinusoidal waves with smaller bandwidth. The carrier frequency can be adjusted over the whole UWB frequency band by changing the capacitance of a capacitor bank. The transmitter driver controls the output power and matches the 50Ω antenna load. The average power consumption of the transmitter is 1.85mW at a carrier frequency of 9GHz using 1V supply.