A Near-Threshold, 0.16 nJ/b OOK-Transmitter With 0.18 nJ/b Noise-Cancelling Super-Regenerative Receiver for the Medical Implant Communications Service

A 0.16 nJ/b MICS transmitter and 0.18 nJ/b super-regenerative receiver are demonstrated, where each is specifically designed to operate in the near-threshold region. The low-VDD transmitter utilizes a sub-harmonic injection-locked ring oscillator, edge combiner for frequency multiplication, and class-C power amplifier. The low-VDD receiver introduces a replica super-regenerative receiver as a method to reject common-mode noise sources, such as supply/substrate coupling, thereby reducing undesired self-oscillations and improving BER. Designed in a 90-nm CMOS process, the test-chip measurements show a sensitivity of -80 dBm at 500 kb/s and -65 dBm at 1 Mb/s, respectively, at a BER less than 10^-3, with 340 μW total power.