Ultra-low power radios for ad-hoc networks

In this paper, we present the design of an ultra-low power impulse radio for an ad-hoc sensor network. This radio is designed to meet the 802.15.4a standard for UWB impulse radio while achieving low power operation by aggressively duty cycling both the transmitter and receiver with nearly the same "on-time". The key advance that enables aggressive receiver duty cycling is a new approach to establishing a robust, low jitter global network clock using a pulse coupled oscillator (PCO) algorithm. In this paper we describe how PCO based synchronization is used to design a radio transceiver capable of balanced two way communication and ad-hoc networking for under 30 uW average power in continuous operation.