A 19pJ/pulse UWB transmitter with dual capacitively-coupled digital power amplifiers

A fully integrated pulsed-UWB transmitter that communicates in the 3-to-5 GHz 802.15.4a bands is presented. Enabled by relaxed frequency tolerances of non-coherent communication, the all-digital architecture generates FCC-compliant UWB pulse-bursts using discrete four-level pulse shaping. BPSK-modulation is achieved without the use of a balun through dual capacitively-coupled digital power amplifiers. The transmitter consumes zero static bias power and achieves an energy efficiency of 113-to-19 pJ/pulse at data rates from 100 kbps-to-15.6 Mbps.