A low power ZigBee baseband processor

Abstract

This paper presents an IEEE 802.15.4 (ZigBee) practicable baseband processor including transmitter and receiver. To estimate and compensate carrier phase error at baseband, the receiver allows full digital solution for carrier phase synchronization. An existing packet detection algorithm for spread spectrum communication system is used to estimate large carrier frequency offset. This paper also presents a new decision-feedback algorithm for residue phase error tracking. The proposed receiver achieves system performance as PER = 0.01 at SNR less than 5 dB, which is better than standard specifications. The baseband processor was implemented in simple hardware architecture and designed with low power technique. The chip is fabricated with the TSMC 0.18 mum 1P6M CMOS technology with a gate count of 78 k. The area is 1.633 mm times 1.633 mm, and power consumption is about 1.7 mW at receiver mode under supply voltage of 1.8 V and operating frequency of 4 MHz.