Ultra Low Power Receiver Frontend for WBAN Applications

Abstract: As integrated circuit technology as well as intelligent computing technology advances, sensor networks which can monitor environments, systems, and complicated interactions in a range of applications are becoming widespread. Wireless Body Area Network(WBAN), which can provide medical, assisted living, sports and entertainment functions for human being, is now enabled and is gradually matching the needs of society. The realization of the WBAN sensor nodes requires ultra-low power wireless communication capability and small area cost. In order to optimize sensor nodes lifetime in WBAN, a duty cycle controlled wake up receiver is proposed in this paper. The receiver is designed to operate with low accuracy frequency references, enabling low power and low cost wireless sensor nodes. Envelope detection architecture is used here to demodulate the on-off keying signal due to its low power consumption. The receiver front end is duty cycled at pulse level, by which the power consumption decreases dramatically. This paper presents the design of a duty cycled wake up receiver with minimized power consumption while keeping adequate sensitivity to detect the input signal. The circuit is designed using 90nm CMOS and the simulation result shows a sensitivity of about -64dBm at 400MHz with a power consumption of 30uW at 0.5V power supply.