The goal of this project is to make dust-sized, wearable, autonomous wireless sensor nodes practically realizable by substantially reducing the power demands of the system's most power hungry section; the RF circuits. To that end, a novel RF transceiver capable of delivering adequate performance for sensor networks while consuming remarkably little power has been developed. Substantial power reduction in the RF circuits will shrink the size of battery required to sustain an autonomous sensor node. The goals for power consumption are dependent on the particular requirements placed on the receiver (i.e. data rate, range, interference level, etc.). The target application here is short range (20m) communication. The transceiver is capable of 20m indoor range at 3nJ/bit. The transmitter is 30% efficient at 300uW output power and the receiver has a 6.7dB noise figure while consuming only 330uW.
Project end date: 07/25/07