Ultra Low Power short range radios: Covering the last mile of the IoT

Short Range Radios are predicted to realize a paradigm change by 2020, similar to the revolution of mobile communication, in the nineties. These radios provide the last mile wireless connectivity between “things” and the Internet. They connect your new wearable devices to your smart phone, or enable smart energy monitoring and control in your home. In this paper, we analyze the power breakdown of such new consumer devices operating from small, advanced batteries. It is shown that the wireless connectivity has a dominant impact on the overall power budget of these devices. Today, short range radios with Ultra-Low Power (ULP) consumption, in the range of a few mW, are reported. It is shown that future small and flexible sensor nodes need wireless connectivity at sub-mW “U2LP” consumption. An overview of state-of-the-art short range transceivers reveals promising architectures and circuits to reach the U2LP target.