A Low Power Fully CMOS Integrated RF Transceiver IC for Wireless Sensor Networks

A fully CMOS integrated RF transceiver for ubiquitous sensor networks in sub-gigahertz industrial, scientific, and medical (ISM)-band applications is implemented and measured. The integrated circuit is fabricated in 0.18-mum CMOS technology and packaged in leadless plastic chip carrier (LPCC) package. The fully monolithic transceiver consists of a receiver, a transmitter, and an RF synthesizer with on-chip voltage-controlled oscillator. The chip fully complies with the IEEE 802.15.4 wireless personal area network in sub-gigahertz mode. The cascaded noise figure of the overall receiver is 9.5 dB and the overall transmitter achieves less than 6.3% error vector magnitude for 40 kb/s mode. The chip uses 1.8-V power supply and the power consumption is 25 mW for reception mode and 29 mW for transmission mode

I. Introduction

Recently, the desire for wireless connectivity has led to an exponential growth in wireless communication. In particular, wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are potential wireless network applications for the following future ubiquitous computing system. Ubiquitous sensor networks are an emerging research area with potential applications in environmental monitoring, surveillance, military, health, and security [1]. The power dissipation of WSNs does require low power consumption for several years operation. There has been a great deal of interest in realizing low power, low cost, compact RF transceiver integrated circuit (IC) for WSNs. Several technological trends that are driving the technical evolution of wireless technology include the process scaling of CMOS transistors and higher bandwidth available at industrial, scientific, and medical (ISM) bands. Almost all of the license free bands propose both linear and nonlinear modulation standards for wireless applications, and thus, requiring different design optimizations in the RF transceiver. Along with these issues, there exists the challenge to develop fully integrated wireless solutions in silicon-based substrates [2].