A 2.48 pJ/pulse Low-Power IR-UWB Transmitter in 0.18-μm CMOS Process

Abstract

This paper presents a low-power, OOK-modulated, impulse-radio ultra-wideband (IR-UWB) transmitter. The pulse generation method is derived from a filtered combined edge technique, where narrow pulses are produced by a delay-and-logic gate and shaped with a filter to generate UWB pulses compliant with the FCC standard. The pulse-shaping filter and antenna driving circuit are co-designed and combined into one, that is, a pulse amplifying and shaping circuit that operates in the C-class state, resulting in extremely low complexity, low power, and small circuit area. The proposed IR-UWB transmitter was implemented and fabricated using a standard 0.18-[Formula: see text]m complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) 1p6m process. The power supply voltage is 1.5[Formula: see text]V and the targeted maximal data rate is 250[Formula: see text]Mbps. The chip measurement results show that the output UWB signal covers 3.1–6.0[Formula: see text]GHz frequency band, the power spectrum density conforms to the FCC spectrum masks, and the peak-to-peak voltage of the output UWB pulses is 183[Formula: see text]mV. In addition, the core area of the chip is 0.098[Formula: see text]mm2 and the transmitter power consumption is 2.48[Formula: see text]pJ per pulse.