Design of an S-Band Nanowatt-Level Wakeup Receiver With Envelope Detector-First Architecture

This article presents the first demonstration of a sub-100 nW CMOS wakeup receiver (WuRx) with envelope detector (ED)-first architecture that operates at multigigahertz frequencies. The 2.2 GHz S-band WuRx can operate in two modes that show a tradeoff between power consumption and RF sensitivity. In the low-power mode, the WuRx consumes 11.3 nW and achieves an RF sensitivity of -65 dBm. In the high-sensitivity mode, the WuRx consumes 28.2 nW and achieves a sensitivity of -68 dBm. Measurement results indicate that the WuRx architecture is robust to continuous-wave in-band interferers, with as large as -20 dB carrier-to-interferer ratio.