A 36nW Ultra-Wideband Wake-Up Receiver with -86dBm Sensitivity and Addressing Capabilities

Ultra-wideband (UWB) technology has emerged as one of the most promising localization solutions, finding extensive use in industrial settings and a growing presence in the Internet of Things (IoT) and mobile devices, including smartphones. What sets UWB apart in the realm of localization and positioning is its impressive centimeter-level accuracy, enabling the development of highly secure, anti-spoofing applications. However, the primary challenge hindering the adoption of UWB in battery-operated and battery-less devices is its relatively high power consumption, especially during idle listening. Current approaches often adopt duty cycling, aiding in power conservation at the cost of increased latency. This paper presents a wake-up radio integrated circuit with addressing capabilities specifically designed for ultra-wideband communication and ranging. This wake-up radio seamlessly functions with any standard commercial UWB transceiver, generating on-off keying messages, eliminating the need for a separate radio. Our proposed solution achieves an impressive sensitivity of −86dBm while consuming an average of 36nW of power in waiting-for-wake-up mode and 1mW during signal sampling. The system supports full asynchronous communication, ensuring millisecond-level latency and maintaining an always-on capability. The digital interface of the design allows one to choose the desired trade-off between latency and power consumption, promising substantial energy savings for applications with strict power constraints.