Cavity opto-mechanics enabled radiation pressure (RP) driven oscillators shown in the past offer an all optical Radio Frequency (RF) source without the need for external electrical feedback. However these oscillators require external tapered fiber or prism coupling and non-standard fabrication processes. In this work, we present a CMOS compatible fabrication process to design high optical quality factor opto-mechanical resonators in silicon nitride. The ring resonators designed in this process demonstrate low phase noise RP driven oscillations. Using integrated grating couplers and waveguide to couple light to the micro-resonator eliminates 1/f(3) and other higher order phase noise slopes at close-to-carrier frequencies present in previous demonstrations. We present an RP driven opto-mechanical oscillator (OMO) operating at 41.97 MHz with a signal power of -11 dBm and phase noise of -85 dBc/Hz at 1 kHz offset with only 1/f(2) noise down to 10 Hz offset from carrier.

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This paper presents a low power radio design tailored to the short distance, low data rate application of body area networks. In our analysis we consider a comparison between traditional continuous wave radios and ultra wide band impulse radios for this application space. We analyze the energy/bit requirement for each of the architectures and discuss how a duty-cycled radio is better suited to low data rate applications due to practical design considerations. As a proof-of-concept we present the design and measured results of a duty-cycled, noncoherent impulse radio transceiver. The designed transceiver was measured to consume only 19 W at a data-rate of 100 kbps. The design gives a BER of 10 5 and works for a range of 2.5 m at an average Rx-sensitivity of 81 dBm. The designed transceiver enables both OOK and BPSK schemes and can be configured to use a pseudocoherent self-correlated signature detection and generation mechanism. This added functionality helps distinguish different types of pulses such as timing and data-pulses in real time. The transceiver was designed in a 90 nm CMOS process and occupies 2.3 mm 2 area.Index Terms-Body-area-networks, impulse radio, noncoherent detection, ultralow-power radio, ultrawideband (UWB), wireless sensor networks.

Optomechanical systems have enabled wide-band optical frequency conversion and multichannel all-optical radio frequency amplification. Realization of an on-chip silicon communication platform is limited by photodetectors needed to convert optical information to electrical signals for further signal processing. In this paper we present a coupled silicon microresonator, which converts near-IR optical intensity modulation at 174.2 MHz and 1.198 GHz into motional electrical current. This device emulates a photodetector which detects intensity modulation of continuous wave laser light in the full-width-at-half-maximum bandwidth of the mechanical resonance. The resonant principle of operation eliminates dark current challenges associated with convetional photodetectors. While the results presented here constitute a purely classical demonstration, the device can also potentially be extended to the quantum regime to realize a photon-phonon translator.