Narrowband Transmitters: Ultralow-Power Design

Recent advancements in integrated radio design have enabled many new applications ranging from wearable health-care or fitness monitors to Internet of Things devices, structural integrity monitors, and beyond. In many of these applications, device size and battery life are of critical importance. Since radios often consume a significant portion of the power budget in small sensing nodes [1], reducing radio power consumption is an effective way to decrease battery size or increase battery life. Reducing radio power consumption can be challenging as there are important tradeoffs between power consumption and performance metrics such as radiated output power, linearity, sensitivity, channelization capabilities, and interference sensitivity. Low-power radio designs often sacrifice one or more of these metrics in the pursuit of low overall power consumption.