A Low Power tunable Impulse Radio Ultra-Wideband Transmitter for Biomedical Applications

Abstract Ultra-low power wireless communication systems are the crucial enabling technology for health care applications and biomedical research. A wireless link is a essential feature in biomedical implants such as electrocardiogram (ECG) recording, neural recording, electroencephalogram (EEG) recording, and brain-computer interface that allows for remote diagnosis by limiting a patient's free movement. The desired device should be compact, wearable, wireless and it should employ low-power to monitor the vital signs. The technology which can appease these requirements is the Impulse Radio Ultra-Wideband (IR-UWB) technology. The Ultra-Wideband (UWB) technology is used for short distance communication which transmits at a high data rate with minimal power consumption. An ultra-low power transmitter has been implemented in a 180 nanometer Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) fabrication process. The transmitter is implemented utilizing an on-off keying (OOK) modulation scheme in order to transmit ultra-short pulses. The primary goal of this project is to decrease the power usage of the transmitter through tunability and exploiting the advantageous features of complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) technology. The schematic and simulations of the IR-UWB transmitter were conducted using the generic gpdk180nm CMOS technology in Cadence virtuoso circuit simulator. The power consumption of the transmitter was found to be 0.378 mW at a pulse frequency of 100 MHz.