Giant Magnetoimpedance Receiver With a Double-Superheterodyne Topology for Magnetic Communication

Radio reception relies on the medium which determines the propagation characteristics of the electromagnetic fields carrying the information. The permittivity varies greatly depending on the medium, but it remains nearly constant, except when magnetic materials are used. For this reason, magnetic fields, typically affected by permeability, can be utilized in microwave challenging environments. In this paper, a new approach based on the giant magnetoimpedance (GMI) effect is presented. The proposed GMI-based receiver has an effective double-superheterodyne topology, where "effective" means that the receiver actually has a single mixer but appears to have added a virtual mixer due to the GMI effect. The magnetic field-to-voltage conversion ratio (MVCR), the spurious free dynamic range (SFDR) and the receiver sensitivity are characterized, and from these results the optimal operating conditions of the fabricated receiver are obtained. Additionally, wireless digital communication using on-off keying (OOK) is demonstrated and transmitted and received waveforms are compared, with the final demodulation result of the receiver showing that the transmitted digital data are precisely extracted.