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| Receiver Architecture | ||||
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It is our philosophy that, to meet the stringent energy requirements demanded by sensor network applications, a break from traditional radio architectures will be necessary. The stringent low power requirements necessitate custom circuit design and new architectures. The low cost requirement mandates full integration and the use of standard CMOS. The need to have a very small form factor eliminates the possibility of easing power consumption requirements with low carrier frequencies and large antennas. To this end, we are interested in exploring new technologies, such as RF micro-electromechanical system (MEMS). Extensive collaboration with the Berkeley Sensor and Actuator Center and Agilent Technologies has been useful in demonstrating these design philosophies. Our research has yielded preliminary results showing that these exciting new technologies will make meeting these goals possible. More | ||||
| Transmitter | ||||
| Ad-hoc wireless transmitter faces very different challenges as compared to its counterparts in traditional transceivers (e.g. Wireless LAN, Bluetooth). In a typical sensor network, the transmitter sends out sporadic bursts of short data packets to neighboring sensor nodes. To reduce operational cost, all the energy used by the transceiver is either scavenged from the environment and it should last the entire lifetime of the product. Operating in an energy limited domain calls for a re-thinking of new energy efficient transmitter and circuits. More | ||||
| Reactive Radio | ||||
| Wireless sensor nodes require an ultra-low power RF transceiver in order to meet the stringent power requirements of the system. Since the transceiver consumes power whenever it is active, it would be advantageous to leave the receiver off and wake it up only when data is being received. This sort of architecture is termed a reactive radio or carrier sense, where the node remains in standby mode and only reacts when data is sent to the node. With this goal in mind, this research explores a minimum power RF receiver that would detect a carrier signal and turn on the node's main RF transceiver for data transfer. More | ||||
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