A 37.5 uW Body Channel Communication Wake-Up Receiver With Injection-Locking Ring Oscillator for Wireless Body Area Network

Abstract

An ultra-low power wake-up receiver for body channel communication (BCC) is implemented in 130 nm CMOS process. The proposed wake-up receiver uses the injection-locking ring oscillator (ILRO) to replace the RF amplifier with low power consumption. Through the ILRO, the frequency modulated input signal is amplified to the full swing rectangular signal directly demodulated by the following low power PLL-based FSK demodulator. In addition, the energy-efficient BCC link mitigates the sensitivity and selectivity requirements for the receiver, which significantly reduces the power consumption. Furthermore, the auto frequency calibrator (AFC) is adopted to compensate the free running frequency of the ring oscillator which is caused by temperature variation and leakage current. The AFC reuses the PLL-based demodulator to periodically set the free running frequency to the desired frequency without any area overhead. As a result, the proposed wake-up receiver achieves a sensitivity of -62.7 dBm at a data rate of 200 kbps while consuming only 37.5 mu W from the 0.7 V supply.