Ultra Low-Power MEMS-Based Radios for WBAN

MEM resonators (FBAR) prove superior to quartz crystals for building Ultra Low Powered (ULP) wireless body area network (WBAN) systems owing to their fast wake-up which serves to reduce the energy overhead in the frequency synthesizer. The communication in some of these nodes which involve implantable devices occur through the human body which is a lossy medium that should be taken into consideration. The main source of the power dissipation in the WBAN systems is the radio required to communicate with the data collection hub. Using such resonators, the loop-based synthesizer (PLL) employing crystal oscillator reference can be replaced by a loop- free, almost fully digital synthesizers which not only can startup in ?>s, but also avoid the latency due to the settling of the PLL. The FBAR pseudo-lattice filter limits the noise bandwidth which prevents noise folding, a major drawback in sampling receivers.