volume | PIER Journals

Abstract

A low-power on-off-keying impulse-radio (IR) ultra-wideband (UWB) pulse generator (PG) intended for wireless-powered IR-UWB radio applications is presented. The proposed PG has high flexibility, the center frequency, output power and pulse-width (PW) are controllable depending on channel conditions and data rates. Qualitative frequency-domain and transient analyses are presented. A new figure-of-merit (FoM) is proposed such that a more precise comparison between different PGs can be made. The PG is successfully implemented in a TSMC 90 nm CMOS process, measurements show the energy consumption and FoM to be 2.8-7.5 pJ/pulse and 1.6-2.6% respectively. The output swing and PW are 277-329 mV_p-p and 509-1088 ps respectively. The core area is 0.092 mm².

1. Lee, K. K. and T. S. Lande, "A wireless-powered IR-UWB transmitter for long-range passive RFID tags in 90-nm CMOS," IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems II: Express Briefs, Vol. 61, No. 11, 870-874, Nov. 2014.
doi:10.1109/TCSII.2014.2350292 Google Scholar

2. Radiom, S., et al. "Far-field on-chip antennas monolithically integrated in a wireless-powered 5.8GHz downlink/UWB uplink RFID tag in 0.18-μm standard CMOS," IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits, Vol. 45, No. 9, 1746-1758, Sep. 2010.
doi:10.1109/JSSC.2010.2055630 Google Scholar

3. Baghaei-Nejad, M., et al. "A remote-powered RFID tag with 10Mb/s UWB uplink and −18.5dBm sensitivity UHF downlink in 0.18 μm CMOS," IEEE ISSCC Digest of Technical Papers, 198-199, Feb. 2009. Google Scholar

4. Sim, S., D.-W. Kim, and S. Hong, "A CMOS UWB pulse generator for 6–10 GHz applications," IEEE Microwave and Wireless Components Letters, Vol. 19, No. 2, 83-85, Feb. 2009.
doi:10.1109/LMWC.2008.2011318 Google Scholar

5. Zhou, L., et al. "A 2-Gb/s 130-nm CMOS RF-correlation-based IR-UWB transceiver front-end," IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques, Vol. 59, No. 4, 1117-1130, Jan. 2011.
doi:10.1109/TMTT.2011.2114190 Google Scholar

6. Ryckaert, J., et al. "A 0.65-to-1.4 nJ/burst 3-to-10GHz UWB all-digital TX in 90 nm CMOS for IEEE 802.15.4a," IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits, Vol. 42, No. 12, 2860-2869, Dec. 2007.
doi:10.1109/JSSC.2007.908665 Google Scholar

7. Lee, K. K., M. Z. Dooghabadi, H. A. Hjortland, Ø. Næss, and T. S. Lande, "A 5.2 pJ/pulse impulse radio pulse generator in 90 nm CMOS," Proceedings of IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems, 1299-1302, May 2011. Google Scholar

8. Zhao, M. J., B. Li, and Z. H. Wu, "20-pJ/pulse 250Mbps low-complexity CMOS UWB transmitter for 3–5 GHz applications," IEEE Microwave and Wireless Components Letters, Vol. 23, No. 3, 158-160, Mar. 2013.
doi:10.1109/LMWC.2013.2245412 Google Scholar

9. Diao, S. X., Y. J. Zheng, and C. H. Heng, "A CMOS ultra low-power and highly efficient UWB-IR transmitter for WPAN applications," IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems II: Express Briefs, Vol. 56, No. 3, 200-204, Mar. 2009.
doi:10.1109/TCSII.2009.2015369 Google Scholar

10. Niknejad, A. M., Electromagnetics for High-speed Analog and Digital Communication Circuits, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2007.
doi:10.1017/CBO9780511805738

11. Xia, J., C. L. Law, Y. Zhou, and K. S. Koh, "3–5 GHz UWB impulse radio transmitter and receiver MMIC optimized for long range precision wireless sensor networks," IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques, Vol. 58, No. 12, 4040-4051, Dec. 2010. Google Scholar

Dr. Kin Keung Lee

Dr. Tor Sverre Lande