Design of CMOS Integrated UWB Antenna for Implantable Biosensors

This article presents design and analysis of a compact UWB antenna towards its integration together with UWB transceiver in a standard CMOS process. Even though, in implantable biomedical devices (IBD), the application of Ultra-Wideband (UWB) wireless technology as a possible low-power alternative to existing narrow band wireless approach has been already addressed, analysis of a miniaturized UWB antenna has not been published up yet. Thus, this work is focused on the analysis of spiral UWB antennas in standard 90 nm CMOS manufacturing process. The main output of this analysis is a discussion about the antenna compactness, which is the primary parameter with respect to intended integration of the antenna along with a front-end radio-frequency (RF) unit and management systems into a single integrated-circuit (IC) package. Other important parameters such as antenna gain and size are also evaluated.