This paper describes the hardware implementation of a custom communication protocol tailored for low power telemetry data streaming over an inductive link. An efficient transceiver design is achieved by adapting only the essential physical layer features of a typical RFID baseband processor and optimizing the flow control logic for continuous and reliable data transfer. For the external near-field reader, we provide a logical model for receiver operation and suggest a simple forward error correction (FEC) mechanism. The benefit of FEC in the context of developed communication system is demonstrated by simulations, and projections of design scalability are also presented. The proposed communication system was implemented in 28nm CMOS process. Place-and-route (PNR) results occupy only 0.0048 mm2 of core area, and the transient simulations show a power consumption of 306 nW at 0.5 V supply and a master clock of 845.7 kHz. The implementation provides an uplink rate of 12 kbit/s, sufficient for reliable transmission of a 1-channel 1 kS/s 12-bit sample recording.Peer reviewe
