Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
3005
I. INTRODUCTION
LTRA-LOW-POWER (ULP) transceivers enable shortrange networks of autonomous sensor nodes for wirelesspersonal-area-network (WPAN) and body-area-network (BAN)
applications. In such applications, the RF transceiver can consume up to 90% of the total battery energy in a remote wireless
sensor node. In order to extend the operation lifetime, it is a primary design goal for such a transceiver to improve the energy
efficiency, expressed as power consumption divided by the data
rate, to below 1 nJ/bit.
The power consumption of the receivers (RXs) is mainly set
by the requirements of the sensitivity and the tolerance of interference, which both are relaxed in short-range WPAN/BAN
applications in comparison to long-range applications (e.g.,
Manuscript received May 09, 2014; revised August 07, 2014, October 15,
2014, and October 16, 2014; accepted October 16, 2014. Date of publication
November 13, 2014; date of current version November 20, 2014. This paper
was approved by Guest Editor Sven Mattisson.
The authors are with the IMEC-Holst Centre, Eindhoven, 5656AE The
Netherlands (e-mail: yao-hong.liu@imec-nl.nl).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/JSSC.2014.2365092
cellular). Many WPAN/BAN radios still prefer to keep sufficient link margin (i.e., TX output powerRX sensitivity)
even for a short communication distance, since the signal
attenuation through or around the human body can be as high as
70 dB. Therefore, assuming that the TX output power is around
0 dBm, RX sensitivity that is better than 80 dBm then is
preferable. Meanwhile, the RXs tolerance to the interference,
especially from the adjacent channels in the same network, is
much more relaxed because of the reduced TX output power.
Frequency hopping or spectrum spreading are commonly used
in short-range radios to mitigate strong interference from other
networks, however, wideband interference (e.g., 20 MHz WiFi
signal) is still difficult to avoid. Fortunately, the energy of such
wideband signal is spreading over a wider bandwidth, thus
causing less impact to a narrow-band RX.
Although energy-detection ASK RXs [1] are extremely efficient, they are vulnerable to any interference that is stronger
than the desired signal (i.e., having an adjacent channel rejection
smaller than 0 dB), which leads to a poor quality of the wireless
link in a crowded 2.4 GHz ISM band. On the other hand, the constant-envelop binary-FSK type RXs, e.g., GFSK, MSK, Halfsine shaped Offset-QPSK (HS-OQPSK) RXs are popular in the
target applications because of their simple demodulation hardware and a better immunity to interference. They are also widely
adopted in many short-range wireless standards for WPAN and
BAN, like ZigBee (IEEE802.15.4) or Bluetooth Low Energy.
Conventional RF/analog front-end of FSK/PSK RXs usually
employees Cartesian I/Q structures e.g., (super)-heterodyne [2]
or homodyne RXs [3], to process phase information in the complex domain, so two parallel channels are required to separately
down-convert, filter and digitize the analog I and Q signals.
While Cartesian I/Q RXs heavily rely on the analog signal
conditioning (i.e., frequency down-conversion, amplification
and analog-to-digital conversion), it minimizes the complexity
of the LO generation that is basically a high-speed digital
circuit. However, as technology scaling dramatically degrades
the performance of the analog circuits (e.g., gain, linearity),
it also offers a better power efficiency and faster switching
speed of digital logics. In order to leverage the benefit in the
nano-scale CMOS technologies, part of the design complexity
is best shifted from the analog I/Q signal channels to the
LO generation.
In this paper, we present an ultra-low power single-channel
RX which tracks the input frequency/phase-modulated signals
0018-9200 2014 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
3006
IEEE JOURNAL OF SOLID-STATE CIRCUITS, VOL. 49, NO. 12, DECEMBER 2014
Fig. 1. Phase-domain RXs: (a) conventional Cartesian FSK/PSK RXs with a phase-ADC or a differentiator, (b) single-channel phase tracking RXs, (c)
frequency-to-digital converter-based FSK RXs.
plified, while the efficiency can be enhanced by driving the circuits into the switching mode, e.g., PLL-based FSK TXs [2], [4].
Similarly, in the RX counterpart, rather than processing the
signal in the I/Q domain, it can be demodulated in the phase
domain by replacing I/Q ADCs with a phase-ADC [5] or a
phase differentiator [6], as shown in Fig. 1(a). However, such
approaches still require a power-hungry high-frequency quadrature-phase LO generation and a 2-dimensional frequency downconversion, filtering, and digitization circuits.
In the single-channel phase-tracking RX of [7], a free-running VCO is part of the RX carrier recovery and frequency-demodulation loop, as shown in Fig. 1(b). The RX power consumption can be significantly reduced, since it only needs one
channel and does not require high-frequency quadrature LO
generation. However, if it is used as a front-end to directly receive RF modulated signals, the center frequency of a free-run-
LIU et al.: A 1.2 nJ/bit 2.4 GHz RECEIVER WITH A SLIDING-IF PHASE-TO-DIGITAL CONVERTER FOR WIRELESS PERSONAL/BODY AREA NETWORKS
3007
3008
IEEE JOURNAL OF SOLID-STATE CIRCUITS, VOL. 49, NO. 12, DECEMBER 2014
Fig. 2. (a) The proposed phase-to-digital conversion loop with a phase rotator. (b) The output phase range of the analog phase integration/quantization and digital
phase integration. (c) The simplified block diagram of the proposed RX with SIF-PDC.
and a 4 bit digital phase integrator output represents the demodulated phase
. The phase selector picks one of 16
phases according to
. More LO phases can be generated
LIU et al.: A 1.2 nJ/bit 2.4 GHz RECEIVER WITH A SLIDING-IF PHASE-TO-DIGITAL CONVERTER FOR WIRELESS PERSONAL/BODY AREA NETWORKS
3009
Fig. 3. A simulated CFO detection and compensation with the proposed SIF-PDC.
should adjust the signal amplitude and detect a large CFO within
a very short preamble.
As mentioned in Section III-A, the 1 bit quantization in the
SIF-PDC makes the proposed RX less sensitive to the amplitude
fluctuation and more tolerant to the amplitude saturation. Cartesian I/Q RXs adapt to different input levels by adjusting both RF
and the analog baseband gain to avoid the saturation due to the
limited ADC dynamic range. On the other hand, the SIF-PDC
increases dynamic range by processing in phase domain, so only
the RF gain needs to be adjusted to protect the phase detector
from compression. Hence, the automatic gain control (AGC) algorithm is largely simplified.
Since the CFO translates to a slow and uni-directional phase
drift, it can be easily detected within a preamble by monitoring
the output digitized phase
of the SIF-PDC. Then it can
be immediately compensated during payload.
Fig. 3 shows the simulated CFO detection and compensation with a short 8-symbol preamble 01010101 (similar to Bluetooth Low Energy), and a repeat test pattern of
01-0000-1111-0101-01 as payload. A CFO up to 100 ppm
is added, which is detected during a short 8-symbol preamble
(01010101) by monitoring the phase output,
, of the
SIP-PDC. It is then directly compensated during payload. In
this simulation, the packet arrives after a random delay. First
the radio detects only noise, then after energy detection the
preamble detector is switched on. The preamble detector is
designed to cope with 100 ppm CFO and only requires a
portion of the preamble. When the preamble is detected, the demodulated output is passed to the DBB for further processing.
In the figure we show both the CFO compensated signal and
the un-compensated signal.
3010
IEEE JOURNAL OF SOLID-STATE CIRCUITS, VOL. 49, NO. 12, DECEMBER 2014
Fig. 4. (a) A equivalent frequency-domain equivalent linear model of SIF-PDC, and the signal and noise transfer functions, (b) simulated LPF and comparator
waveform with and without phase non-linearity.
LIU et al.: A 1.2 nJ/bit 2.4 GHz RECEIVER WITH A SLIDING-IF PHASE-TO-DIGITAL CONVERTER FOR WIRELESS PERSONAL/BODY AREA NETWORKS
3011
Fig. 5. The simplified block diagram and schematic of the IF mixer, LPF and the dynamic comparator.
found from extensive numerical simulations to avoid a misleading result predicted by the linear model [17].
The loop bandwidth of the SIF-PDC can be derived from the
linear model as
(2)
Equation (2) indicates the loop bandwidth of the SIF-PDC can
be approximated to the accumulation rate of digital phase integrator,
. In addition, the dependency to the input signal
amplitude A of the phase detector is compensated by the comparator, so the overall SIF-PDC transfer function is now amplitude independent.
The loop bandwidth selection of the SIF-PDC is determined
by the requirements of the interference rejection, quantization
noise suppression, and the frequency digitization range. In-band
quantization noise of the SIF-PDC is suppressed by a high-pass
NTF, so
should not be too low. At the mean time, the lowpass STF helps to suppress out-band unwanted components, so
is preferably low. Moreover, the loop bandwidth is approximately equal to the full scale of the frequency digitization
range, so it has to be at least equal or larger than the deviation
frequency
of the targeted frequency-modulated signals.
A LPF with a cut-off frequency of
can be employed in
the SIF-PDC to further assist the suppression of out-band interfere, so the interference rejection requirement is decoupled from
the loop bandwidth selection. However, the presented SIF-PDC
is no longer a simple 1st-order loop when a LPF is used, so the
loop stability should be taken into account. Assuming LPF is
a 1st-order filter to simplify the analysis, and the LPF bandwidth
is significant larger than the loop bandwidth
and the signal bandwidth, so the assumption in (1) and (2) are
(3c)
The damping factor
expressed as
(4)
To avoid peaking and have a stable 2nd-order system the
damping factor should be larger than 0.7, which indicates
the LPF bandwidth
should be at least twice as the loop
bandwidth
. Therefore, to optimize between interference
rejection, quantization noise suppression, frequency digitization range and the loop stability the loop bandwidth
is chosen to match the deviation frequency f, and the LPF
bandwidth is selected to be approximately 3 times of the loop
bandwidth, i.e.,
(5)
Phase quantization noise due to discrete phases degrade
the RX demodulation quality, and it can be reduced by either
increasing the number of LO phases or by employing noise
shaping. The former is not preferred as it leads to higher
power consumption and low image rejection. The high-pass
noise shaping suppresses in-band phase quantization noise
3012
IEEE JOURNAL OF SOLID-STATE CIRCUITS, VOL. 49, NO. 12, DECEMBER 2014
Fig. 6. Simplified schematic of the multi-phase generation and the phase selector.
LIU et al.: A 1.2 nJ/bit 2.4 GHz RECEIVER WITH A SLIDING-IF PHASE-TO-DIGITAL CONVERTER FOR WIRELESS PERSONAL/BODY AREA NETWORKS
3013
Fig. 7. (a) Measured time-domain demodulated waveform of a 2 Mbps HS-OQPSK and a 1 Mbps GFSK with the proposed SIF-PDC. (b) Measured comparator
kHz.
output spectrum with a sinusoidal frequency-modulated input signal,
3014
IEEE JOURNAL OF SOLID-STATE CIRCUITS, VOL. 49, NO. 12, DECEMBER 2014
Fig. 8. (a) Measured bit error rate of a 2 Mbps HS-OQPSK signal, (b) adjacent
channel rejection, and (c) power breakdown of the proposed RX.
LIU et al.: A 1.2 nJ/bit 2.4 GHz RECEIVER WITH A SLIDING-IF PHASE-TO-DIGITAL CONVERTER FOR WIRELESS PERSONAL/BODY AREA NETWORKS
3015
TABLE I
PERFORMANCE SUMMARIES AND COMPARISON
VII. CONCLUSION
A new phase-domain RX based on a sliding-IF phase-to-digital converter (SIF-PDC) for directly demodulating and
digitization FSK/PSK signals is presented in this paper.
In comparison to the conventional Cartesian I/Q RXs, the
proposed SIF-PDC saves RX power consumption without
3016
IEEE JOURNAL OF SOLID-STATE CIRCUITS, VOL. 49, NO. 12, DECEMBER 2014
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank IMEC-Netherlands
Ultra-low power DSP and Wireless System teams for the
support of digital design and the testing.
REFERENCES
[1] M. Vidojkovic et al., A 2.4 GHz ULP OOK single-chip transceiver
for healthcare applications, in IEEE ISSCC Dig. Tech. Papers, 2011,
pp. 458459.
[2] Y.-H. Liu et al., A 1.9 nJ/bit 2.4 GHz multistandard (Bluetooth low
Energy/ZigBee/IEEE802.15.6) transceiver for personal/body area networks, in IEEE ISSCC Dig. Tech. Papers, 2013, pp. 446447.
[3] S. Chakraborty et al., An ultra low power, reconfigurable, multi-standard transceiver using fully digital PLL, in Proc. Symp. VLSI Circuits,
2013, pp. 148149.
[4] A. Wang et al., A 1 V 5 mA multimode IEEE 802.15.6/Bluetooth
low-energy WBAN transceiver for biotelemetry applications, in IEEE
ISSCC Dig. Tech Papers, 2012, pp. 300301.
[5] J. Masuch and M. Delgado-Restituto, A 1.1-mW-RX 81.4-dBm
sensitivity CMOS transceiver for bluetooth low energy, IEEE Trans.
Microw. Theory Tech., vol. 61, no. 4, pp. 16601673, Apr. 2013.
[6] P. Quinlan et al., A multimode 0.3200-kb/s transceiver for the 433/
868/915-MHz bands in 0.25- m CMOS, IEEE J. Solid-State Circuits,
vol. 39, no. 12, pp. 22972310, Dec. 2004.
[7] H. Gustat and F. Herzel, Integrated FSK demodulator with very high
sensitivity, IEEE J. Solid-State Circuits, vol. 38, no. 2, pp. 357360,
Feb. 2003.
[8] I. Galton, W. Huff, P. Carbone, and E. Siragusa, A Delta-Sigma
PLL for 14-b, 50 kSample/s frequency-to-digital conversion of a 10
MHz FM signal, IEEE J. Solid-State Circuits, vol. 33, no. 12, pp.
20422053, Dec. 1998.
[9] J. Craninckx and M. Steyaert, A 1.75-GHz/3-V dual-modulus
divid-by-128/129 prescaler in 0.7- m CMOS, IEEE J. Solid-State
Circuits, vol. 31, no. 7, pp. 890897, Jul. 1996.
[10] S. Kashmiri, S. Xia, and K. Makinwa, A temperature-to-digital converter based on an optimized electrothermal filter, IEEE J. Solid-State
Circuits, vol. 40, no. 7, pp. 20262035, Jul. 2009.
[11] Y.-H. Liu and T.-H. Lin, A wideband PLL-based G/FSK transmitter
in 0.18 m CMOS, IEEE J. Solid-State Circuits, vol. 44, no. 9, pp.
24522462, Sep. 2009.
Ao Ba (M14) received the B.E. degree in microelectronics from Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou,
China, in 2009, and the M.S. degree (cum laude)
in electrical engineering from Delft University of
Technology, Delft, The Netherlands, in 2011.
In 2011, he joined Holst Centre/imec, The Netherlands, as a researcher. His technical interests include
ultra-low power RF and mixed-signal IC design and
digitally-assisted RF IC design.
LIU et al.: A 1.2 nJ/bit 2.4 GHz RECEIVER WITH A SLIDING-IF PHASE-TO-DIGITAL CONVERTER FOR WIRELESS PERSONAL/BODY AREA NETWORKS
Kathleen Philips (M03) received the M.Sc. degree in electrical engineering from the Katholieke
Universiteit Leuven, Belgium, in 1995. She then
joined the Mixed-Signal Circuits and Systems group
of Philips Research Laboratories, Eindhoven, The
Netherlands, where she designed mixed-signal
CMOS circuits. For her work on sigma-delta conversion, she received the Ph.D. degree from Eindhoven
University of Technology, The Netherlands, in 2005.
Since 2007, she has been with the Wireless group
of the Holst Centre/IMEC, The Netherlands, where
she has been working on ultra-low power radio IC design. As a principal researcher, she is now leading this activity and she is a program manager for the
ultra-low-power wireless program.
3017
PHY and MAC layer design, radio wave propagation, smart antenna design,
and RF and microwave IC design. He has (co)-authored over 100 papers in
scientific/technical journals and proceedings, and holds 14 U.S. patents. He
is also associated with Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) as a full
Professor of the chair Person-Centric Sensor Microelectronic Systems.
Harmke De Groot (M11) holds a Master of Science in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from
the University of Technology Eindhoven (1997) and
an MBA from TIAS business school (2013).
She is program director at Holst Centre and imec
in the field of ultra-low power circuits and sensors.
Her team contributes to the Internet of Things revolution by developing innovative short-range radios,
DSP, sensor and harvester solutions that enable smart
sensor networks and other ultra-low power applications. She worked at NXP, Philips Research and Microsoft before joining Holst Centre and imec in 2008.
Harmke De Groot is a member of several expert and standardization groups
and (co-)author of over 60 publications and a book on embedded system design.