A 2.4 GHz low power wireless transceiver analog front-end for endoscopy capsule system

This work presents the design and implementation of a 2.4 GHz low power wireless transceiver analog front-end for the endoscopy capsule system in 0.25 μm CMOS. The prototype integrates a low-IF receiver analog front-end (low noise amplifier, double-balanced down-converter, band-pass-filtered AGC loop, and ASK demodulator) and a direct-conversion transmitter analog front-end (20 MHz IF PLL with well-defined amplitude control circuit, ASK modulator, up-converter, and output buffer) on a single chip together with one integrated RF oscillator and two LO buffers. Trade-off has been made over the design boundaries of the different building blocks to optimize the overall system performance. All building blocks feature the circuit topologies that enable comfortable operation at low power consumption. As a result, the IC works at a 2.5 V power supply, while only consuming 15 mW in receiver (RX) mode and 14 mW in transmitter (TX) mode. To build a complete transceiver for the endoscopy capsule system, only an antenna, a duplexer, and a digital controller are needed besides the presented analog front-end chip.