A 2mW 400MHz RF transceiver SoC in 0.18um CMOS technology for wireless medical applications

An ultra low power 400 MHz 128 kbps-FSK RF transceiver SoC which consumes less than 2 mA from a 1 V supply was implemented in a 0.18 mum CMOS technology for wireless medical applications and applied to a wireless hearing aid communication system, a new generation of hearing aid device. The transceiver was implemented fully differentially and directly matched to a non-50ohm miniaturized dipole antenna. The receiver sensitivity of -93 dBm (BER=10^-3) was measured for 128 Kbps data rate. The transceiver architecture has the ability of selection of image band in receive mode and transmitting in the image band in transmit mode. The whole RF transceiver including digital modulator and demodulator occupies a die area of less than 2.6 mm².