An integrated 3.1-5.1 GHz pulse generator for ultra-wideband wireless localization systems

This paper presents an implementation of an integrated Ultra-wideband (UWB), Binary-Phase Shift Keying (BPSK) Gaussian modulated pulse generator. VCO, multiplier and passive Gaussian filter are the key components. The VCO provides the carrier frequency of 4.1 GHz, the LC Gaussian filter is responsible for the pulse shaping in the baseband. Multiplying the baseband pulse and the VCO frequency shifts the pulse to the desired center frequency. The generated Gaussian pulse ocupppies the frequency range from 3.1 to 5.1 GHz with the center frequency at 4.1 GHz. Simulations and measured results show that this spectrum fulfills the mask for indoor communication systems given by the FCC (Federal Communications Commission, 2002). The total power consumption is 55 mW using a supply voltage of 2.5 V. Circuits are realized using the IHP 0.25 μm SiGe:C BiCMOS technology

Interconnection of IEEE 802.15.4 and Ethernet networks

Táto práca sa venuje probému prepojovania rôznych typov sietí, konkrétne sietí typu IEEE 802.15.4 a Ethernetu. Motivácia vychádza zo stále sa rozširujúceho využitia bezdrátových senzorických sietí, potreby zberu dát z nich a ich integrácie. To vyžaduje aby sieť obsahovala prvky schopné preniesť dáta z bezdrátovej siete do okolitého sveta a prípadne poskytnúť konfiguračné a riadiace informácie do vnútra siete. Z hľadiska protokolov a programového vybavenia sa prepojenie uskutočňuje na rôznej úrovni, od sieťovej až po aplikačnú vrstvu komunikačného modelu ISO/OSI, s podporou hardvéru na fyzickej a linkovej vrstve.This work is devoted to the problem of interconnection of different network types, specifically IEEE 802.15.4 and Ethernet networks. Motivation for implementing such an interconnection arises from increased use of WSNs (Wireless Sensor Networks) penetrating many of today's segments of human activity. Deployment of WSNs stems out of the need of controlling and/or monitoring of environment this network is attached to. This usually implies the existence of some kind of Gateway nodes capable of relaying of measured data from inside of the WSN to the outside world and/or providing configuration information and control commands to the WSN. A Gateway usually accomplishes this by interconnecting the WSN with other types of networks acting as a border element. There are different types of Gateways with different capabilities regarding to the network operation, all dependent on a particular network in use. On the software part the interconnection may be done from Network up to Application layer of the ISO/OSI model. Hardware interfaces Physical and Data-Link layers and of course has to be capable of running interfacing software (which may be rather complex). So there is always balance between the system complexity and sufficient capabilities.

Wireless wire - ultra-low-power and high-data-rate wireless communication systems

With the rapid development of communication technologies, wireless personal-area communication systems gain momentum and become increasingly important. When the market gets gradually saturated and the technology becomes much more mature, new demands on higher throughput push the wireless communication further into the high-frequency and high-data-rate direction. For example, in the IEEE 802.15.3c standard, a 60-GHz physical layer is specified, which occupies the unlicensed 57 to 64 GHz band and supports gigabit links for applications such as wireless downloading and data streaming. Along with the progress, however, both wireless protocols and physical systems and devices start to become very complex. Due to the limited cut-off frequency of the technology and high parasitic and noise levels at high frequency bands, the power consumption of these systems, especially of the RF front-ends, increases significantly. The reason behind this is that RF performance does not scale with technology at the same rate as digital baseband circuits. Based on the challenges encountered, the wireless-wire system is proposed for the millimeter wave high-data-rate communication. In this system, beamsteering directional communication front-ends are used, which confine the RF power within a narrow beam and increase the level of the equivalent isotropic radiation power by a factor equal to the number of antenna elements. Since extra gain is obtained from the antenna beamsteering, less front-end gain is required, which will reduce the power consumption accordingly. Besides, the narrow beam also reduces the interference level to other nodes. In order to minimize the system average power consumption, an ultra-low power asynchronous duty-cycled wake-up receiver is added to listen to the channel and control the communication modes. The main receiver is switched on by the wake-up receiver only when the communication is identified while in other cases it will always be in sleep mode with virtually no power consumed. Before transmitting the payload, the event-triggered transmitter will send a wake-up beacon to the wake-up receiver. As long as the wake-up beacon is longer than one cycle of the wake-up receiver, it can be captured and identified. Furthermore, by adopting a frequency-sweeping injection locking oscillator, the wake-up receiver is able to achieve good sensitivity, low latency and wide bandwidth simultaneously. In this way, high-data-rate communication can be achieved with ultra-low average power consumption. System power optimization is achieved by optimizing the antenna number, data rate, modulation scheme, transceiver architecture, and transceiver circuitries with regards to particular application scenarios. Cross-layer power optimization is performed as well. In order to verify the most critical elements of this new approach, a W-band injection-locked oscillator and the wake-up receiver have been designed and implemented in standard TSMC 65-nm CMOS technology. It can be seen from the measurement results that the wake-up receiver is able to achieve about -60 dBm sensitivity, 10 mW peak power consumption and 8.5 µs worst-case latency simultaneously. When applying a duty-cycling scheme, the average power of the wake-up receiver becomes lower than 10 µW if the event frequency is 1000 times/day, which matches battery-based or energy harvesting-based wireless applications. A 4-path phased-array main receiver is simulated working with 1 Gbps data rate and on-off-keying modulation. The average power consumption is 10 µW with 10 Gb communication data per day

Multi-band OFDM UWB receiver with narrowband interference suppression

A multi band orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (MB-OFDM) compatible ultra wideband (UWB) receiver with narrowband interference (NBI) suppression capability is presented. The average transmit power of UWB system is limited to -41.3 dBm/MHz in order to not interfere existing narrowband systems. Moreover, it must operate even in the presence of unintentional radiation of FCC Class-B compatible devices. If this unintentional radiation resides in the UWB band, it can jam the communication. Since removing the interference in digital domain requires higher dynamic range of analog front-end than removing it in analog domain, a programmable analog notch filter is used to relax the receiver requirements in the presence of NBI. The baseband filter is placed before the variable gain amplifier (VGA) in order to reduce the signal swing at the VGA input. The frequency hopping period of MB-OFDM puts a lower limit on the settling time of the filter, which is inverse proportional to notch bandwidth. However, notch bandwidth should be low enough not to attenuate the adjacent OFDM tones. Since these requirements are contradictory, optimization is needed to maximize overall performance. Two different NBI suppression schemes are tested. In the first scheme, the notch filter is operating for all sub-bands. In the second scheme, the notch filter is turned on during the sub-band affected by NBI. Simulation results indicate that the UWB system with the first and the second suppression schemes can handle up to 6 dB and 14 dB more NBI power, respectively. The results of this work are not limited to MB-OFDM UWB system, and can be applied to other frequency hopping systems

Energy-efficient analog-to-digital conversion for ultra-wideband radio

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2007.Includes bibliographical references (p. 207-222).In energy constrained signal processing and communication systems, a focus on the analog or digital circuits in isolation cannot achieve the minimum power consumption. Furthermore, in advanced technologies with significant variation, yield is traditionally achieved only through conservative design and a sacrifice of energy efficiency. In this thesis, these limitations are addressed with both a comprehensive mixed-signal design methodology and new circuits and architectures, as presented in the context of an analog-to-digital converter (ADC) for ultra-wideband (UWB) radio. UWB is an emerging technology capable of high-data-rate wireless communication and precise locationing, and it requires high-speed (>500MS/s), low-resolution ADCs. The successive approximation register (SAR) topology exhibits significantly reduced complexity compared to the traditional flash architecture. Three time-interleaved SAR ADCs have been implemented. At the mixed-signal optimum energy point, parallelism and reduced voltage supplies provide more than 3x energy savings. Custom control logic, a new capacitive DAC, and a hierarchical sampling network enable the high-speed operation. Finally, only a small amount of redundancy, with negligible power penalty, dramatically improves the yield of the highly parallel ADC in deep sub-micron CMOS.by Brian P. Ginsburg.Ph.D