A noise-reducing 0.48 nJ/bit interference-robust non-coherent energy detection IR-UWB receiver for wireless sensor networks

A non-coherent interference-tolerant energy detection (ED) IR-UWB receiver with a front-end noise reduction technique is presented. By relaxing the LNA noise requirement, a reduction in power consumption is achieved without sacrificing performance. The fabricated prototype in a 130 nm CMOS process operating with a supply voltage of 1.2 V, achieves the best energy efficiency of 0.48 nJ/bit for ED receivers reported to date. This energy efficiency is maintained across a wide data rate range of 0.1-25 Mb/s. In-band and out-of-band narrowband interferers as strong as -61 dBm and -42 dBm, respectively, can be tolerated to achieve a BER of 10^-3. The measured sensitivity is -82 dBm.