A 4-Mbps 41-pJ/bit On-off Keying Transceiver for Body-channel Communication with Enhanced Auto Loss Compensation Technique

This paper presents a body-channel communication (BCC) transceiver for wireless body sensor network applications. The transceiver employs on-off keying (OOK) modulation and operates in the quasi-static band. It achieves high energy efficiency and stability through two innovative methods: 1) an auto-loss compensation (ALC) technique attenuates the time-variant path loss in the wearable scenario; 2) a capacitive interface in the receiver strengthens the path loss compensation. The transceiver is designed and fabricated in 180-nm CMOS process, it achieves 4-Mbps data rate with a 41-pJ/bit energy efficiency over 1.5-m distance. It also exhibits resiliency to the ground variations and achieves $4.1\times$ reduction in path loss.