A comprehensive study on the power-sensitivity trade-off in TRF receivers

Abstract

There has always been a trade-off between the sensitivity of an RF receiver and its total power consumption meaning that in order to design a receiver with a high sensitivity, more power must be dissipated. However, this inevitable trade-off can be tolerated in applications where only one of these two margins is of interest. For example, ultra-low power receivers in general and wake-up receivers in particular may still be applicable with a sensitivity of better than -70 dBm if the power consumption requirement has been satisfied. We present in this paper a through analytical/graphical approach in order to derive the power-sensitivity characteristics for a general Tuned Radio Frequency receiver based on practical assumptions.