A 2.12-V $V_{pp}~11.67$ -pJ/pulse Fully Integrated UWB Pulse Generator in 65-nm CMOS Technology

This paper presents a high-voltage ultra-wideband (UWB) pulse generator. Shifting the UWB signal synthesis to digital domain using two consecutive trapezoidal waves, the design requires only a simple low-loss passive filter to conform to UWB spectrum regulations. A power amplifier stage is added to boost the output voltage above the supply voltage limit. To verify the design concept, the generator is designed in TSMC CMOS 65 nm technology with 1 V supply voltage occupying a die size of 0.34 mm
²
. The UWB generator achieves an efficiency of 21% while the total energy consumption is 11.67 pJ/pulse. On-chip measurement is in good agreement with the simulation and shows output peak-to-peak amplitude of 2.12 V after adding the cable and probe losses to the measured 1.62 V peak-to-peak voltage. The proposed UWB signal generator achieves the highest peak-to-peak to supply voltage ratio among the UWB signal generators reported to the date.