Ultra low-power low-complexity tunable 3-10 GHz IR-UWB pulse generator

Abstract

A new very low power impulse radio ultra-wideband (IR-UWB) pulse generator is investigated in the paper. The low complexity and tunable architecture is composed of a glitch generator, a switched ring oscillator, a two-stage energy efficient buffer and a pulse shaping filter (two versions). It is designed and simulated in low-cost 0.18 μm UMC CMOS technology. Post-layout simulation results showed spectrum that covers whole UWB band and fully complies with the corresponding FCC spectral mask. The pulse duration is around 0.5 ns, and the peak-to-peak amplitude is 211 mV on 50 Ω output load. Since the impulse radio-based generator operates in burst mode with low duty cycle, it has ultra low power consumption of 0.89 mW corresponding to energy consumption of 8.9 pJ per pulse for 100 MHz pulse repetition frequency (PRF). For the output filter with additional off-chip inductor and PRF of 200 MHz, Power Spectral Density reaches the maximum value of -41.33 dBm/MHz at 6.4 GHz, consuming average power of 2 mW. The peak-to-peak amplitude in this case is 250 mV with pulse duration of around 0.75 ns. The chip occupies very small area of only 558 × 556 μm2 mainly due to simple pulse generator architecture.