An ultra low power, compact UWB receiver with automatic threshold recovery in 65 nm CMOS

A compact UWB receiver operating at 4.85 GHz is presented in a 65 nm CMOS technology. This aggressively duty cycled, non-coherent OOK receiver occupies an active area of only 0.4 mm
²
, thanks to the use of few inductors and RF G
_m
-C filters. It achieves a sensitivity of -88 dBm at a data rate of 1 Mbps (for a BER of 10
^-3
) while consuming energy at a gradient of 450 pJ/bit from a 1.35 V supply. The receiver incorporates a single bit comparator based demodulator, with automatic threshold recovery for digitization.