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. 2024 Sep 30;24(19):6369.
doi: 10.3390/s24196369.

A Temperature-Robust Envelope Detector Receiving OOK-Modulated Signals for Low-Power Applications

Alessia Maria Elgani  1   2 , Matteo D'Addato  1   2 , Luca Perilli  2   3 , Eleonora Franchi Scarselli  2   3 , Antonio Gnudi  2   3 , Roberto Canegallo  1 , Giulio Ricotti  1
Affiliations

A Temperature-Robust Envelope Detector Receiving OOK-Modulated Signals for Low-Power Applications

Alessia Maria Elgani et al. Sensors (Basel). .

Abstract

This paper presents a passive Envelope Detector (ED) to be used for reception of OOK-modulated signals, such as in Wake-Up Receivers employed within Wireless Sensor Networks, widely used in the IoT. The main goal is implementing a temperature compensation mechanism in order to keep the passive ED input resistance roughly constant over temperature, making it a constant load for the preceding matching network and ultimately keeping the overall receiving chain sensitivity constant over temperature. The proposed ED was designed using STMicroelectronics 90 nm CMOS technology to receive 1 kbps OOK-modulated packets with a 433 MHz carrier frequency and a 0.6 V supply. The use of a block featuring a Proportional-to-Absolute Temperature (PTAT) current yields a 5 dB reduction in sensitivity temperature variation across the -40 °C to 120 °C range. Moreover, two different implementations were compared, one targeting minimal mismatch and the other one targeting minimal area. The minimal area version appears to be better in terms of estimated overall chain sensitivity at all temperatures despite a higher sensitivity spread.

Keywords: envelope detector; temperature compensation; ultra-low-power; wake-up receivers (WuRXs).

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Conflict of interest statement

Authors Alessia Maria Elgani, Matteo D’Addato, Roberto Canegallo and Giulio Ricotti were employed by the company STMicroelectronics. The remaining authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
(a) Passive ED as in [12] and (b) estimation of its propagation delay.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Proposed ED with temperature compensation [22].
Figure 3
Figure 3
The typical WuRX chain excluding the final digitizing element, as in [12].
Figure 4
Figure 4
Sample simulated waveforms in a differential passive ED for VM = 5 mV. From top to bottom: ED input signal VRF, ED single-ended outputs VED+ and VED−, and ED differential output VED+−VED−.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Sample simulated waveforms in a differential passive ED for VM = 5 mV, 15 mV and 30 mV. From top to bottom: ED single-ended outputs VED+ and VED−, ED differential output VED+−VED−. The picture shows ED output distortion due to increased input power.
Figure 6
Figure 6
Version 1 simulated Rin with and without the use of the PTAT block.
Figure 7
Figure 7
Version 1 simulated Psens with and without the use of the PTAT block.
Figure 8
Figure 8
Simulated Psens of versions 1 and 2, both with the use of the PTAT block.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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