Ultra-Fast Bit-Level Frequency-Hopping Transmitter for Securing Low-Power Wireless Devices

Current BLE transmitters are susceptible to selective jamming due to long dwell times in a channel. To mitigate these attacks, we propose physical-layer security through an ultra-fast bit-level frequency-hopping (FH) scheme by exploiting the frequency agility of bulk acoustic wave resonators (BAW). Here we demonstrate the first integrated bit-level FH transmitter (TX) that hops at 1μs period and uses data-driven random dynamic channel selection to enable secure wireless communications with additional data encryption. This system consists of a time-interleaved BAW-based TX implemented in 65nm CMOS technology with 80MHz coverage in the 2.4GHz ISM band and a measured power consumption of 10.9mW from 1.1V supply.