An ultra-low-power wireless transceiver SoC for medical applications

An energy-efficient radio SoC with RF front-end, DBB (digital baseband) and MCU (microcontroller) for medical/healthcare applications in 315/400 MHz bands is presented. The SoC is fully-compliant with IEEE 802.15.6 standard in 402-405MHz MICS (Medical Implant Communication Service) band and 420-450MHz ISM (Industrial, Scientific, and Medical) band, and also supports a proprietary mode with a high data rate up to 3.6Mb/s to support applications such as EEG streaming. The ADPLL (all-digital phase-locked loop)-based transmitter is adopted to support various modulation schemes with limited power budget. Fabricated in 40nm CMOS technology with 1V supply, the transceiver SoC with DBB and MAC MCU has total power consumption of 3.5mW (RX, 3.6Mb/s, -77dBm sensitivity) and 3.0mW (TX, 3.6Mb/s, -16dBm PA output) enabling best-in-class power efficiency less than 1nJ/bit.