Low-Power CMOS Energy Detection Transceiver for UWB Impulse Radio System

This paper presents an ultra low-power noncoherent transceiver (TRx) operating in 3-5 GHz band using energy detection (ED) receiver for impulse radio ultra-wideband (IR-UWB) systems. The proposed low-complexity ED receiver consists of a wideband LNA, a squarer, an analog integrator, and a sample and hold circuit, of which only the LNA consumes static current. The transmitter consists of a pulser which is based on the ON/OFF operation of an LC oscillator. Fabricated in 0.18-μm CMOS technology with 1.5 V supply, measurements show the FCC-compliant output pulses with the duration of 3.5 ns, which corresponds to 520 MHz bandwidth. Maximum pulse rate is up to over 200 MHz. The pulser dissipates only the dynamic current with average energy of 16.8 pJ per pulse, and the receiver dissipates 3.5 mA of static current. The receiver shows 9 dB of NF and a sensitivity of -70 dBm. Transceiver die size is 1.3times1 mm.