System design of an IEEE 802.15.4a-compliant, merged smallband/ultra-wideband radio receiver

The IEEE 802.15.4a task group has been and is working on the baseline specifications of both a narrowband and a pulsed ultra-wideband radio for low-power, low-rate and low-cost communication and ranging. Simulations show that through the appropriate choice of narrowband versus wideband radio communication, up to 4 times lower energy is consumed per bit. This paper introduces the novel idea of merging both radios into one flexible front-end and back-end. A low power receiver architecture, that allows both wideband and narrowband data reception is introduced. This reconfigurable receiver enables communication at the lowest energy consumed per bit, while keeping the area overhead and stand-by power low. The required design constraints for the different front-end blocks are derived through computations and simulation.