An Agile, Ultra-Wideband Pulse Radio Transceiver With Discrete-Time Wideband-IF

A pulse-based CMOS ultra-wideband transmitter and receiver have been realized using a standard digital 90 nm CMOS process. The transceiver uses digital templates stored in high-speed memories for pulse generation on the transmit side and for correlation on the receive side. This allows fast band switching for multi-band operation and interferer avoidance without the requirement for fast-settling phase-locked loops. The receiver contains a 3.1-9.5 GHz broadband front-end and discrete-time intermediate frequency correlators that achieve a pulse rate of 100 Mpulses/s and has a die area of 1 mm² while consuming 130 mA from a 1.2 V supply. The transmitter uses interleaved, intermediate frequency digital-to-analog converters followed by partial-order hold reconstruction filters that eliminate sampling images, and a quadrature RF up-converter. 1.25 nJ is spent per transmitted pulse for a pulse-repetition rate of 100 MHz while achieving a broadband image cancellation of 42 dB.