Integrated Circuit Design for Energy-Efficient Short-Range Communication Systems

Relentless scaling in silicon CMOS technology has enabled designers with applications and systems that were considered science-fiction only a decade ago. It is now possible to sense many different physical and chemical variables, convert them to digital, process them, and relay the data wirelessly using very little energy. Such developments have empowered technologies and applications like IoT, wireless sensor networks, health monitoring, among others. The common requirements for wireless communication in these scenarios are that the transceivers should be simple, energy efficient, integratable, and short range. Such requirements render these transceivers different from classical modulation based narrow-band communication systems.In this talk, two examples will be discussed. The first part of the talk will focus on Impulse Radio Ultra Wideband (IR-UWB) transmitter and receiver integrated circuit designs. The second part will describe two super regenerative receiver (SRR) integrated circuit design alternatives.