A 6.5-to-10GHz IEEE 802.15.4/4z-Compliant 1T3R UWB Transceiver

Abstract

Ultra-wideband (UWB) technology differentiates itself from other wireless connectivity techniques, such as WiFi and Bluetooth, by providing centimeter-level location accuracy due to its impulse-radio operation. This unique feature draws much interest in smartphones, smart homes, intelligent vehicles, AR/VR, and loT applications since accurate ranging/positioning adds a new dimension to existing wireless communication functions. The recently released IEEE 802.15.4z enhances UWB PHYs to increase the integrity and accuracy of ranging measurement and specifies a security extension for secure ranging [1]. Not many prior works have reported standard-compliant system-level UWB solutions except that some building blocks were discussed, such as coherent transmitters [2], [3]. An integrated UWB transceiver was reported in [4], which contains one transmitter and one receiver. However, the 1T1R architecture must switch between antennas to enable a phase-difference-of-arrival (PDoA) measurement, a primary use case for smartphone applications. Additional switches bring more insertion loss at the RF front-end. Moreover, the ranging time increases since it must measure multiple times, introducing accumulated timing error that significantly degrades the positioning accuracy.