A 3.54 nJ/bit-RX, 0.671 nJ/bit-TX Burst Mode Super-Regenerative UWB Transceiver in 0.18-$mu{rm m}$ CMOS

摘要

Non-coherent ultra-wideband (UWB) transceiver employing energy detector suffers from degradation in output SNR due to the squarer. A burst mode super-regenerative UWB transceiver which can recover the received signal to rail-to-rail with relatively fewer post-amplification stages is proposed. Unlike other super-regenerative receiver architectures that use oscillator, the proposed architecture employs a positive feedback loop to achieve the super-regeneration of received signal and thus eliminates the need for external resonator or quench signal. The transceiver is suitable for low data rate sensor networks application covering spectrum of 3–5 GHz. Manufactured in CMOS 0.18-$mu{rm m}$ technology, the transceiver occupies an area of 2.2 mm $times$ 2 mm. By exploiting the duty cycle and the transceiver on-time through the burst mode operation for a given data rate of 1 Mbps, it can achieve transmitter energy efficiency of 0.671 nJ/bit and receiver energy efficiency of 3.54 nJ/bit.