A BICMOS micropower 1 GHz super regenerative receiver

The objective of this circuit is to develop a new solution for micropower wireless data transmission over short distance. The frequency bands are the UHF ISM (Industrial Scientific and Medical) frequency bands (centered frequency equal to 433.82 MHz in Europe and 916.8 MHz in USA). As the ISM frequency bands are widely used, a half-duplex link between the receiver and the transmitter is often necessary. Typical applications of this receiver are high volume low-cost and low-power data transmission systems such as: interconnections of computer peripherals, wireless distributed sensors, domotics, and biomedical circuits. Most of those devices are supplied by two batteries in series which deliver a supply voltage between 2 V and 3.2 V. In practice, the target current consumption is lower than 1 mA to extend the battery life. In this paper, it is shown that the supply voltage and current consumption constraints can be fulfilled by a 2 V, 0.6 mA receiver which has been integrated in a 6 GHz, 0.8 um BICMOS technology.