The chip is an ultra-low-power radio receiver implemented only with CMOS logic gates used as basic building blocks and proves its operation. The self-timed duty-cycled system is self-synchronized with the input radio signal, runs a noise-robust baseband detection and does not require any reference besides power supply. Based on S-OOK modulation, the 350-450 MHz digitalradio RX occupies an area of 0.07 mm 2 in a 130 nm RFCMOS technology and achieves a 0.1% sensitivity of -63 dBm at 95 kbps, 380 MHz center frequency and 40 μW active power consumption at 1.1 V power supply. At 1.0 V it achieves -62 dBm sensitivity and 33 μW active power at ~ 0.1% error rate.

This chip is a very low-complexity all-digital IR-UWB transmitter that can generate pulses in the band 0-5 GHz, requiring a silicon area lower than a PAD for signal I/O. The transmitter, suited to non-standardized low data rate applications, is prototyped in a 130 nm RFCMOS technology and includes analog control signals for frequency and bandwidth tuning. Center frequency is linearly selected with voltage supply, 0.5 V for the range 0-960 MHz and 1.1 V supply for the higher 3.1-5GHz range. The architecture is based on the same delay cell for both baseband and radio frequency signal generation and pulses fractional bandwidth remains constant when voltage supply and control voltages scale. At 420 MHz center frequency, the transmitter achieves 7 pJ/pulse, and for 4 GHzcenter frequency pulses, it achieves 32 pJ/pulse active energy consumption. The OOK/S-OOKtransmitter occupies an area of 0.004 mm2.

This circuit is a fully asynchronous threshold-based IR-UWB receiver which enables a high sensitivedistance estimation. It includes an ultra-low power baseband unit which achieves 533 fJ/pulse with an asynchronous, multipath robust and time expiring energy detector, which embeds signal strength in the baseband processing latency to increase sensitivity to TX-RX separation. Asynchronous line-of-sight over-the-air measurements obtained with an integrated all-digital transmitter show a maximum sensitivity of 1mm TX-RX separation per nanosecond system latency. The RX also permits data communication based on the use of self-synchronized modulations.