A fully integrated 2.4-GHz CMOS RF transceiver for low-rate wireless sensor networks

This article describes a low‐power and low‐cost fully integrated 2.4 GHz IEEE 802.15.4 RF transceiver for low‐rate wireless sensor networks. The RF transceiver adopts the single‐IF direct‐conversion architecture. For the high linearity, the RF receiver front end utilizes the current mirror amplifier as well as the transconductance linearization technique. The single‐IF I/Q modulation transmitter is integrated with the current‐mode analog baseband circuit and up‐mixer using the current mirror amplifier. The frequency synthesizer based on an integer‐N PLL topology offering 1.92 GHz differential and 0.48 GHz quadrature LO signals is also integrated on the RF transceiver. The fully integrated transceiver is fabricated in a 0.18‐μm CMOS technology and its die size is 3.7 mm × 3.6 mm including ESD I/O pads. It achieves the −94 dBm receiver sensitivity, 8 dB receiver chain noise figure, and maximum transmitter output power of 1 dBm while drawing power consumption of 31 mW in the receive mode and 42 mW in the transmit mode with the 1.8 V supply. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 51: 1481–1487, 2009; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/mop.24349