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Ultra-WideBand Transmitter for Wireless Body Area Networks
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Short Description: of an ultra-low power, lowest-complexity transmitter and shift the complexity as much as possible ... Impulse-based ultra-wideband transmitter architecture ...
Content Inside: Ultra-WideBand Transmitter for Wireless Body Area Networks Julien Ryckaert1, Claude Desset, Vincent de Heyn, Mustafa Badaroglu, Piet Wambacq2, Geert Van der Plas, Bart Van Poucke IMEC Kapeldreef, 75 — B-3001 Leuven — Belgium Phone: +32 16 28 83 44 — Fax: +32 16 28 15 15 e-mail: ryckj@imec.be 1 Also PhD student at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) 2 Also Lecturer at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) Abstract — The successful realization of a Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) requires innovative solutions to meet the energy consumption budget of the autonomous sensor nodes. The radio interface is a major challenge, since its power consumption must be reduced below 100µW (energy scavenging limit). The emerging Ultra-WideBand (UWB) technology shows strong advantages in reaching this target. First, most of the complexity of an UWB system is in the receiver, which is a perfect scenario in the WBAN context. Second, the very little hardware complexity of an UWB transmitter offers the potential for low-cost and highly integrated solutions. Finally, in a pulse-based UWB scheme, the transmitter can be duty-cycled at the pulse rate, thereby reducing the baseline power consumption. We present a low-power UWB transmitter that can be fully integrated in standard CMOS technology. Measured performances of the pulse generator are provided, showing the potential of UWB Fig. 1. The technology vision for the year 2010: people will be car- for low power and low cost implementations. rying their personal body area network and be connected with service providers regarding medical, sports and entertainment functions. I. Introduction It is expected that technology will enable people to carry their personal body area network (BAN) [1] that provides applications, such as latency. Thanks to the low data rate medical, sports or entertainment functions for the user of typical sensors, the radio can be operated in burst mode (Figure 1). This network comprises a series of miniature with a minimal duty cycle. Moreover, the power budget in sensor/actuator nodes each of which has its own energy the sensor node and in the master device are very different. supply, consisting of storage and energy scavenging devices. The sensor has an extremely tight power budget, whereas The successful realization of this vision requires innovative the master has a slightly more relaxed power budget. In the solutions to remove the critical technological obstacles to air interface definition this asymmetry is exploited by shift- realize the BAN sensor nodes. First, the overall size should ing as much complexity as possible to the master device. be compatible with the required form factor. This requires For all these reasons Ultra-WideBand (UWB) modulation new integration and packaging technologies. Secondly, the is believed to have strong advantages compared to more energy autonomy of current battery-powered devices is lim- traditional narrowband radio communication. Indeed, in ited and must be extended. Finally, the energy consump- pulse-based UWB, the transmitter only needs to operate tion of all building blocks needs to be drastically reduced. during the pulse transmission, producing a second duty cy- This last point is a major challenge for the radio interface. cle inside the burst. Since most of the complexity of UWB The average power consumption of the radio in the sensor communication is in the receiver, this allows the realization node must be reduced below 100µW [2]. Today’s low power of an ultra-low power, lowest-complexity transmitter and radios such as Bluetooth and Zigbee [3] cannot meet this shift the complexity as much as possible to the receiver in stringent requirement and new innovative solutions must be the master. found. For instance, if one takes the body environment and In this paper, we present an UWB transmitter with low the RF properties of the body into consideration, the air in- power consumption and low complexity to be used in the terface can be optimized for the body-area network context. body-area network context. Section II discusses the gen- A further optimization can be done by taking into account eral transmitter architecture and in Section III we describe the simple network topologies, the relatively small number the pulse generator implementation as being the central of nodes and the specific requirements of body monitoring component in the transmitter. Measurement results of the
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