A Low-Power Low-Data Rate Impulse Radio Ultra-Wideband (IR-UWB) Transmitter

A low-power and low-data-rate (100 kbps) fully integrated CMOS impulse radio ultra-wideband (IR-UWB) transmitter for biomedical application is presented in this paper. The transmitter is designed using a standard 180-nm CMOS technology that operates at the 3.1-5 GHz frequency range with more than 500 MHz of channel bandwidth. Modulation scheme of this transmitter is based on on-off keying (OOK) in which a short pulse represents binary “1” and absence of a pulse represents binary “0” transmission. During the ‘off’ state (sleep mode) the transmitter consumes only 0.4 μW of power for an operating voltage of 1.8 V while during the impulse transmission state it consumes a power of 36.29 μW. A pulse duration of about 3.5 ns and a peak amplitude of the frequency spectrum of about -47.8 dBm/MHz are obtained in the simulation result which fully complies with Federal Communication Commission (FCC) regulation.