ISSCC 2014 / SESSION 9 / LOW-POWER WIRELESS / 9.

9.7 A 0.33nJ/b IEEE802.15.6/Proprietary-MICS/ISM- ΔΣ modulator, which keeps the quantization noise floor below the required
Band Transceiver with Scalable Data-Rate from ACPR level. Dynamic element matching is adopted to further reduce the ACPR.
Unlike [3] where the AM code is applied to the gate of the cascode transistors,
11kb/s to 4.5Mb/s for Medical Applications
this PA is controlled by the AND gates placed at the input of each unit cell, which
relaxes the gate-drain overstress of the cascode transistor (MC).
Maja Vidojkovic1, Xiongchuan Huang1, Xiaoyan Wang1, Cui Zhou1,
Ao Ba1, Maarten Lont1, Yao-Hong Liu1, Pieter Harpe2, Ming Ding1, Figure 9.7.3 shows the highly-reconfigurable receiver. In the single-ended LNA,
Ben Busze1, Nauman Kiyani1, Kouichi Kanda3, Shoichi Masui3, gm of the cascode transistor M1 and the load resistor R1 are variable so that the
Kathleen Philips1, Harmke de Groot1 LNA current and the RX NF can be traded (400μA for 5dB and 100μA for 8.4dB).
Inductive degeneration together with variable R and C between the gate and
1
Holst Centre/imec, Eindhoven, The Netherlands, source of the input transistor M2 keeps the input S11 below -10dB from 325MHz
2
Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, The Netherlands, to 518MHz. The mixer is composed of a variable-gm input stage, passive
3
Fujitsu Laboratories, Kawasaki, Japan switches driven by 25% duty-cycled LO signals, and a variable-trans-impedance
amplifier. To achieve 17dB adjacent-channel rejection, an active-RC 3rd-order
The introduction of the IEEE802.15.6 standard (15.6) for wireless-body-area
Butterworth LPF is used. The capacitors C1, C2 and C3 adjust the LPF bandwidth
networks signals the advent of new medical applications, where various wireless
to 150kHz (MICS) and 160kHz (ISM) for the 15.6 mode and 1.2MHz for the high-
nodes in, on or around a human body monitor vital signs. Radio communication
speed mode (MICS/ISM). The transistors in the opamp are biased in the weak-
often dominates the power consumption in the nodes, thus low-power
inversion region where the best gm/ID is obtained, while gate length and width are
transceivers are desired. Most state-of-the-art low-power transceivers support
carefully chosen to lower the 1/f noise. An 8-b differential DAC injects current to
only proprietary modes with OOK or FSK modulations, and have poor sensitivity
the input of the second LPF stage to cancel the DC offset voltage. The optimum
or low data rate [1,2]. In this work, a 15.6-compliant transceiver with enhanced
code is chosen during the 90-b preamble period. Two 8x-oversampling SAR
performance is proposed. First, the data-rate is extended to 4.5Mb/s to cover
ADCs generate 9-b I/Q data at 1.5MS/s in the 15.6 mode and at 12MS/s in the
multi-channel EEG applications. Second, while a best-in-class energy efficiency
high-speed mode.
of 0.33nJ/b is achieved in the high-speed mode, a dedicated low-power mode
reduces the RX power further in low-data-rate operation. Third, a sensitivity 5 to
The transceiver fabricated in 40nm CMOS (Fig. 9.7.7) occupies 1.8mm x 1.7mm
10dB better than the 15.6 specification is targeted to accommodate extra path
on chip. The measured TX EVM is 3.5% and 7% for the 15.6 and high-speed
loss due to shadowing effects from human bodies.
mode (both in π/8 D8PSK), respectively, and ACPR in the 15.6 mode is -27dBc
at -17.2dBm output (Fig. 9.7.4). The RX sensitivity at 0.1% BER is -110dBm in
The MICS band (402 to 405MHz) is chosen to support medical implantable
the 15.6 mode (GMSK, 187.5kb/s), while it is -100dBm (π/2 DBPSK, 1.5Mb/s)
applications together with the 420-to-450MHz ISM band. The low-power mode
and -83dBm (π/8 D8PSK, 4.5Mb/s) in the high-speed mode. The RX sensitivity
has 11kb/s data rate, where the RX NF is relaxed by 12dB to save power by
is 9dB better than the requirement of the 15.6 standard. The measurements were
increasing the spreading factor from 1 (15.6) to 16. In the high-speed mode,
done without the BCH code of rate 51/63. With the BCH coding, the net data-rate
eight 300kHz channels are combined to have 8x higher data-rate. A
decreases by 20% while the RX sensitivity improves by ~1dB. Figure 9.7.5
programmable low-pass filter (LPF) and multi-mode frequency/phase
shows the measured power consumption breakdown. The TX consumes
modulation (FM/PM) are introduced to cover the wide data-rate range. High
1.77mW in GMSK mode with -10dBm output power, where 900μW is from the
sensitivity (-110dBm) and low power (1.19mW RX and 1.77mW TX) are enabled
PA. In π/8 D8PSK mode, the PA power is reduced to 500μW as the output power
by system-level optimization such as architecture selection and LO frequency
is lowered to -17dBm, but the PLL power needs to be increased from 641μW to
planning, and circuit-level techniques such as a low-power VCO, divider and LO
988μW to mitigate the frequency-pulling effect from the PA to the VCO and to
distribution.
keep the ACPR low. RX power consumption is 1.49mW both in the 15.6 and
high-speed modes, while it is 1.19mW in the low-power mode thanks to the
The transceiver IC illustrated in Fig. 9.7.1 consists of polar TX, zero-IF RX, a 24
300μW LNA power-saving. The energy efficiency for the high-speed mode is
MHz crystal oscillator and a digital baseband interface. The polar TX with two-
0.33nJ/b for RX, and 0.4nJ/b for TX. The simulated digital baseband power
point modulation PLL (for FM/PM) and direct-modulation PA (for AM) is better-
dissipation (0.5mW for TX and 0.7mW for RX) is added to compare the power
suited for low power than mixer-based architectures. An LC-VCO is chosen over
and the energy efficiency of the radio with the existing products and published
ring oscillators to achieve the same phase noise with 10-to-100 times lower
ICs [4-6] (Fig. 9.7.6). This work achieves the highest data-rate of 4.5Mb/s and
power. Co-optimization of the VCO and the divider is essential to minimize their
the best energy efficiency of 0.51nJ/b and 0.49nJ/b for TX and RX, respectively.
total power for two reasons : 1) the full-swing LO buffers required by a static
The high sensitivity, energy efficiency and scalability of this transceiver enable
CMOS divider consume a non-negligible amount of power, 2) the power of the
its use in various medical and healthcare applications.
LC-VCO and the divider have opposite dependence on frequency, which means
frequency planning is important. Three different VCO frequencies
Acknowledgement:
(3.2/1.6/0.8GHz) were considered and 1.6GHz was selected together with a
The authors would like to thank Christian Bachmann, Gert-Jan van Schaik and
divide-by-4 circuit. The sense-amplifier divider directly connected to the VCO
Hans Pflug from IMEC-Holst Centre, and Makoto Hamaminato and Hiroyuki Sato
accepts a low input swing of 250mVDIFF, which helps to further reduce VCO
from Fujitsu Laboratories for support during the design and evaluation.
power. To guarantee this voltage swing over PVT variations, an LO swing-
calibration loop is introduced to adjust the VCO bias automatically. The division
References:
ratio of the fractional divider is dynamically changed at 24MHz rate by a 5-b code
[1] J. Pandey, et al., “A 90 μW MICS/ISM Band Transmitter with 22% Global
supplied from a 3rd-order MASH 1-1-1 ΔΣ modulator. A 4th-order PLL loop with
Efficiency”, IEEE RFIC Symposium, pp. 285-288, May 2010.
135kHz bandwidth suppresses the high-frequency ΔΣ noise and reference spurs
[2] J. L. Bohorquez, et al., “A 350μW CMOS MSK Transmitter and 400μW OOK
while achieving 17μs settling time. The PLL measurement showed integrated
Super-Regenerative Receiver for Medical Implant Communications”, IEEE J.
phase error of 1° and -123dBc/Hz phase noise at 1MHz offset from 450MHz with
Solid-State Circuits, vol. 44, no. 4, April 2009.
520μW power consumption.
[3] Y.H.Liu, et al., “A 1.9nJ/b 2.4GHz Multistandard (Bluetooth Low
Energy/Zigbee/IEEE 802.15.6) Transceiver for Personal/Body-Area Networks”,
The required FM range and resolution (±50kHz and 7b for 187.5kb/s GMSK, and
ISSCC Dig. Tech Papers, pp. 446-447, Feb. 2013.
±6MHz and 9b for 4.5Mb/s π/8-D8PSK) were derived from system-level
[4] P.D. Bradley, et, al., “An Ultra Low Power, High Performance Medical Implant
simulations. To cover this wide range, output voltage swing of the DAC and KVCO
Communication System (MICS) Transceiver for Implantable Devices”, IEEE
are programmable (Fig. 9.7.2). The DAC bias is set to 0.4μA and C1 is used for
BioCAS, pp.158-161, Dec. 2006.
the ±50kHz range, while the bias is set to 4μA and both C1 and C2 are used for
[5] V. Peiris, et al., “A 1V 433/868MHz 25kb/s-FSK 2kb/s-OOK RF Transceiver
the ±6MHz range. Placing the VCO far from the PA to reduce noise coupling
SoC in Standard Digital 0.18μm CMOS”, ISSCC Dig. Tech Papers, pp. 258-259,
results in highly-capacitive loads for LO buffers. Single-ended LO signal trans-
Feb. 2005.
mission and differential signal reconstruction using a two-stage edge aligner
[6] F. Carrara et al., “A 400-MHz CMOS Radio Front-End for Ultra Low-Power
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Medical Implantable Applications”, IEEE ESSCIRC, pp. 232-235, Sept. 2009.
b AM code oversampled at 24MHz is given to the PA by a 2nd-order MASH 1-1

170 • 2014 IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference 978-1-4799-0920-9/14/$31.00 ©2014 IEEE
 ISSCC 2014 / February 11, 2014 / 11:45 AM

Figure 9.7.1: 400MHz transceiver block diagram. Figure 9.7.2: TX schematic from VCO to PA.

Figure 9.7.3: RX schematic from LNA to low-pass filter. Figure 9.7.4: Measured TX ACPR and EVM, RX BER and ACR.

Figure 9.7.5: TX / RX power-consumption breakdown. Figure 9.7.6: Performance comparison.

DIGEST OF TECHNICAL PAPERS • 171

 ISSCC 2014 PAPER CONTINUATIONS

Figure 9.7.7: Die micrograph.

• 2014 IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference 978-1-4799-0920-9/14/$31.00 ©2014 IEEE