A 274µW clock synchronized wireless body area network IC with super-regenerative RSSI for biomedical ad-hoc network system

Abstract

A clock synchronized multi-node wireless body area network (WBAN) transceiver IC with super-regenerative RSSI is proposed for biomedical ad-hoc network system. The ad-hoc network makes stable communication even in the harsh human body channel condition (<;-50 dB attenuation) with low-power consumption. The proposed system consists of two types of IC - a hub and node IC. The hub IC broadcasts the 240 MHz clock signal to the whole node ICs and gather the measured data through body channel communication (BCC). In the node IC, it has 2 key building blocks; 1) Injection locking clock synchronization receiver, and 2) Super-regenerative RSSI (SR-RSSI) and OOK receiver. As a result, the 240 MHz clock is exactly synchronized in the node IC with 90 μW power consumption. And a channel-condition-adapted ad-hoc network is constructed based on the SR-RSSI data. SR-RSSI consumes 184 μW concurrent achieving OOK receiver functionality for the ad-hoc network. The proposed WBAN IC is fabricated in 0.18 μm CMOS technology.