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In this paper, we propose a power autonomous sensor platform with ultra-low power radio frequency (RF) transceiver and wireless charging. The ultra-low power RF transceiver consists of super-regenerative receiver and directmodulation transmitter with multi-cell power amplifier. Although the proposed transmitter and receiver only consume 1.79 and 0.683 mW, respectively, the wearable sensor platform requires more power efficient transmitter, due to the limited capacity of rechargeable thin film battery, e.g, 50 ∼ 250 mWhr [1]. Therefore, we apply wireless charging in order to prolong the lifetime and investigate the impact of wireless power transfer on the power autonomy of sensor platform.

This paper discusses design challenges and strategies for aggressively increasing energy efficiency of biosignal monitoring sensors. For the holistic understanding of energy efficiency, we introduce Energy Efficiency metric for all sensor communication blocks which include not only Rx/Tx RF&Analog, PLL and DSP/Modem but also Antenna and Power Management. Based on the metric, an ultra-low energy sensor node design at 2.36~2.5GHz is addressed from RFIC, DSP/Modem to Antenna. To tackle the stringent power requirements, we theoretically revisit the technology, circuits, architecture and system and explore the cross-layer power minimization algorithm.

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