A Low Cost Superregenerative Saw Stabilized Receiver

Superregeneration Revisited: From Principles to Current Applications

“…As most recent implementations are actually based on a VCO for frequency tuning, this approach is the way to go for current implementations. SAW elements, which exhibit inherent stability, have been reported in [50] and a low-power BAW-stabilized SR transceiver implementation was reported in [51], with the BAW (and an additional inductor) the only non-integrated elements.…”

Wireless microsystems for biomedical applications

“…However and despite these positive points, this architecture was left forgotten during a long period of time due to inherent poor selectivity and frequency instability [38]. The interest in the super-regenerative receivers stated to grow in the recent years with a tentative to make such receivers with commercial off-the-shelf components [39], culminating with a fully on-chip solution fabricated in a 0.8 m BiCMOS process [40]. This last solution was one of the first successful approaches for obtaining integrated RF chips with receivers based on the super-regenerative architecture.…”

An 11-Mb/s 2.1-mW Synchronous Superregenerative Receiver at 2.4 GHz

“…It is well known that classical superregenerative receivers suffer from poor frequency selectivity when they are applied to narrowband communications and, consequently, are more vulnerable to noise and interference than other systems [2], [16]. This behavior is caused by the characteristic pulsating operation of the receiver, in which the superregenerative oscillator (SRO) controlled by the quench oscillator samples the envelope of the input signal asynchronously at a rate (quench frequency) that is considerably higher than the modulation bandwidth.…”

“…Although the selectivity can also be improved by using special quench wave shapes, the RF bandwidth will continue to be considerably larger than the modulation bandwidth [2]. The use of stable and high-frequency references such as surface acoustic wave (SAW) or bulk acoustic wave (BAW) devices can also decrease the reception bandwidth, although this unavoidably reduces the quench frequency and, therefore, the data rate [4], [16]. Significant improvements can be obtained by using smart -enhancement techniques, as reported recently in [5] and [6].…”