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Utilizing UWB in ultra-low power ZigBee wireless sensor nodesBy Els Parton, and Olivier Rousseau, IMEC, Jul 24 2007 (13:34 PM) -- Wireless Net DesignLine Ultra-wideband technology (UWB) allows for low-power wireless communication, ideal for wireless sensor nodes. The IEEE 802.15.4 standardization committee who defined the MAC and physical layers adopted by ZigBee recently proposed an alternative physical layer relying on UWB technology. The advantages of this new UWB air interface are mainly an increased data rate which can be tuned in function of the channel quality, an extended communication range, lower power consumption and the possibility to use the air interface for accurate positioning of the transceivers. In this article, we discuss some of the key challenges associated to the design of UWB transmitters. We further present the first reported transmitter complying with the new 802.15.4a standard, which has been implemented in standard 90 nm CMOS technology and shows a record low-power consumption of 1 mW for a net data rate of 0.85 Mbps.
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