A 2.4GHz IEEE 802.15.6 Compliant 1.52nJ/bit TX 1.32nJ/bit RX Multiband Transceiver for Low Power Standards

This paper describes an 802.15.6 compliant 2.36-2.484GHz multiband transceiver that uses an energy efficient programmable digital power amplifier on the transit side and a zero power passive voltage gain frontend using a 1:3 balun on the receive side to achieve low power operation. A 7th harmonic injection locked oscillator and zero power passive polyphase filter generates the phases at 2.4GHz required for phase modulation on the transmit side and for LO generation on the receive side. This enables channel selection using a 342.86 MHz PLL, i.e., at 1/7th of the RF frequency of 2.4GHz to result in low power consumption. The prototype transmitter consumes 1.48 mW of power while delivering -9.47dBm output power resulting in an energy efficiency of 1.52nJ/bit at 971kbps data rate. The measured RMS EVM for π4 DQPSK modulation is 5.68%. The prototype receiver consumes 1.29mW of power resulting in an energy efficiency of 1.32nJ/bit while achieving a receiver noise figure of 10.2dB and an IIP3 of -24.1 dBm. This design does not use offchip inductors.