A novel 1 μW super-regenerative receiver with reduced spurious emissions and improved co-channel interferer tolerance

Wireless sensor network (WSN) applications are under extensive research and development due to the need to interconnect devices with each other. To reduce latency while keeping very low power consumption, the implementation of a wake-up receiver (WuR) is of particular interest. In WuR implementations, meeting high performance metrics is a design challenge, and the obtention of high-sensitivity, high data rate, low-power-consumption WuRs is not a straightforward procedure. The focus of our proposals is centered on power consumption and area reduction to provide high integrability and maintain a low cost-per-node, while we simultaneously improve circuit sensitivity. Firstly, we present a two-stage design based on a feedback technique and improve the area use, power consumption and sensitivity of the circuit by adding a current-reuse approach. The first solution is composed of a feedback amplifier, two op-amps plus a low-pass filter. The circuit achieves a sensitivity of –63.2 dBm with a power consumption of 6.77 µA and an area as low as 398 × 266 µm2. With the current-reuse feedback amplifier, the power consumption is halved in the second circuit (resulting in 3.63 µA), and the resulting circuit area is as low as 262 × 262 µm2. Thanks to the nature of the circuit, the sensitivity is improved to –75 dBm. This latter proposal is particularly suitable in applications where a fully integrated WuR is desired, providing a reasonable sensitivity with a low power consumption and a very low die footprint, therefore facilitating integration with other components of the WSN node. A thorough discussion of the most relevant state-of-the-art solutions is presented, too, and the two developed solutions are compared to the most relevant contributions available in the literature.

Section: Wake-up Receiver Architectures and State Of The Artmentioning

confidence: 99%

Area-Efficient Integrated Current-Reuse Feedback Amplifier for Wake-Up Receivers in Wireless Sensor Network Applications

Galante-Sempere

Ramos-Valido

Khemchandani

et al. 2022

“…The SR based architecture also generates oscillations depending on the input signal strength, and is characterized by an RF oscillator changing between stable and unstable states, controlled by a low-frequency quench oscillator [ 19 ]. Some examples can be found in [ 20 , 21 ]. The SS architecture is somewhat similar to the SH, but in this case the mixers are substituted by sample-and-hold (S/H) circuits [ 13 ].…”

Section: Envelope Detector Wur With Off-chip Componentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Low-Power RFED Wake-Up Receiver Design for Low-Cost Wireless Sensor Network Applications

Galante-Sempere

Ramos-Valido

Khemchandani

et al. 2020

The development of wake-up receivers (WuR) has recently received a lot of interest from both academia and industry researchers, primarily because of their major impact on the improvement of the performance of wireless sensor networks (WSNs). In this paper, we present the development of three different radiofrequency envelope detection (RFED) based WuRs operating at the 868 MHz industrial, scientific and medical (ISM) band. These circuits can find application in densely populated WSNs, which are fundamental components of Internet-of-Things (IoT) or Internet-of-Everything (IoE) applications. The aim of this work is to provide circuits with high integrability and a low cost-per-node, so as to facilitate the implementation of sensor nodes in low-cost IoT applications. In order to demonstrate the feasibility of implementing a WuR with commercially available off-chip components, the design of an RFED WuR in a PCB mount is presented. The circuit is validated in a real scenario by testing the WuR in a system with a pattern recognizer (AS3933), an MCU (MSP430G2553 from TI), a transceiver (CC1101 from TI) and a T/R switch (ADG918). The WuR has no active components and features a sensitivity of about −50 dBm, with a total size of 22.5 × 51.8 mm2. To facilitate the integration of the WuR in compact systems and low-cost applications, two designs in a commercial UMC 65 nm CMOS process are also explored. Firstly, an RFED WuR with integrated transformer providing a passive voltage gain of 18 dB is demonstrated. The circuit achieves a sensitivity as low as −62 dBm and a power consumption of only 528 nW, with a total area of 634 × 391 μm2. Secondly, so as to reduce the area of the circuit, a design of a tuned-RF WuR with integrated current-reuse active inductor is presented. In this case, the WuR features a sensitivity of −55 dBm with a power consumption of 43.5 μW and a total area of 272 × 464 μm2, obtaining a significant area reduction at the expense of higher power consumption. The alternatives presented show a very low die footprint with a performance in line with most of the state-of-the-art contributions, making the topologies attractive in scenarios where high integrability and low cost-per-node are necessary.

“…An SR-based WuRx [ 10 ] demands 40

of power and emphasizes an excellent sensitivity of

. The decoding mechanism is performed on an off-the-shelf complex programmable logic device (CPLD), requiring much higher power than most of the recently published WuRx decoders [ 1 , 3 , 7 , 8 , 11 , 12 , 13 ]. In [ 12 ], a duty-cycled SR receiver is introduced.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The decoding mechanism is performed on an off-the-shelf complex programmable logic device (CPLD), requiring much higher power than most of the recently published WuRx decoders [ 1 , 3 , 7 , 8 , 11 , 12 , 13 ]. In [ 12 ], a duty-cycled SR receiver is introduced. Similar to [ 7 , 8 ], the reduced on-time duty of only 100

also reduces the inactivity time.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Tuned-RF Duty-Cycled Wake-Up Receiver with −90 dBm Sensitivity

Bdiri

Derbel

Kanoun

2017

A novel wake-up receiver for wireless sensor networks is introduced. It operates with a modified medium access protocol (MAC), allowing low-energy consumption and practical latency. The ultra-low-power wake-up receiver operates with enhanced duty-cycled listening. The analysis of energy models of the duty-cycle-based communication is presented. All the WuRx blocks are studied to obey the duty-cycle operation. For a mean interval time for the data exchange cycle between a transmitter and a receiver over 1.7 s and a 64-bit wake-up packet detection latency of 32 ms, the average power consumption of the wake-up receiver (WuRx) reaches down to 3 μW. It also features scalable addressing of more than 512 bit at a data rate of 128kbit/s−1. At a wake-up packet error rate of 10−2, the detection sensitivity reaches a minimum of −90 dBm. The combination of the MAC protocol and the WuRx eases the adoption of different kinds of wireless sensor networks. In low traffic communication, the WuRx dramatically saves more energy than that of a network that is implementing conventional duty-cycling. In this work, a prototype was realized to evaluate the intended performance.