An UWB millimeter-wave transceiver architecture for Wireless Sensor Networks applications

A new simple architecture of transceiver using Impulse Radio Ultra Wide Band (IR-UWB) technique in the millimeter wave (MMW) range suited for Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) is presented. Two integrated transmitters have been designed in a commercial 0.1μm, 100 GHz ft GaAs pHEMT MMIC process. In order to reduce the power consumption, the first IR-UWB 60 GHz transmitter involves a negative differential resistance (NDR) oscillator driven by an UWB pulse generator and a medium power amplifier (MPA), the supply of which is triggered by another UWB pulse generator. This transmitter provides a peak output power of 9 dBm at 57 GHz. The second transmitter is a 30GHz injection-locked oscillator (ILO) driven by a pulse generator followed by a pulse biased buffer amplifier with a peak output power of 5.3 dBm at 28 GHz. The architecture of the receiver is based on the non coherent energy detection and the synchronization is based on the maximum energy integration selection.