A 2.1mW −109dBm NB-IoT Wake-Up Receiver

A low-power standard-compliant NB-IoT wake-up receiver (WRX) is presented. The WRX is designed as a companion radio to a full NB-IoT receiver, only operating during discontinuous RX modes (DRX and eDRX), which allows the full high-power radio to turn off while the wake-up receiver efficiently receives NB-IoT Wake-Up Signals (WUS). The fabricated receiver achieves 2.1mW power at −109dBm sensitivity with 180kHz bandwidth over the 750-960MHz bands. The WRX is fabricated in 28nm CMOS and consumes 5x less power than the best previously published traditional NB-IoT receivers. This work is the first designed dedicated wake-up receiver for the NB-IoT protocol and demonstrates the benefits of utilizing a WRX to reduce power consumption of NB-IoT radios.