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Energy-​Efficient Wire­less & Ana­log Cir­cuits

The re­search group is mainly ded­i­cated to the de­sign of energy-​efficient high-​frequency cir­cuits, which are par­tic­u­larly im­por­tant in battery-​operated sen­sor net­works and in wire­less com­mu­ni­ca­tion. In order to be able to im­ple­ment power-​saving over­all sys­tems, the trans­mis­sion and re­cep­tion cir­cuits are also sup­ple­mented by power man­age­ment so­lu­tions and ana­log sen­sor read­out cir­cuits.

Main tar­gets

The group fo­cuses its re­search ac­tiv­i­ties on min­i­miz­ing the power con­sump­tion of fully in­te­grated trans­mit and re­ceive cir­cuits while en­sur­ing the nec­es­sary RF prop­er­ties. In many nodes of wire­less sen­sor net­works, the power con­sump­tion of the trans­mit­ting and re­ceiv­ing mod­ules is the dom­i­nant fac­tor. There­fore, the de­sign of energy-​efficient wire­less com­mu­ni­ca­tion sys­tems first fo­cuses on the pre­cise de­sign of the high-​frequency cir­cuits in order to min­i­mize sig­nal losses and noise con­tri­bu­tions and to achieve the high­est pos­si­ble sig­nal am­pli­fi­ca­tion with min­i­mal power con­sump­tion. In ad­di­tion, in­tel­li­gent co-​design with the base­band proces­sor and the im­ple­men­ta­tion of suit­able com­mu­ni­ca­tion pro­to­cols are re­quired to ex­tend bat­tery life in such wire­less sen­sor nodes.

In ad­di­tion, the re­search group is also con­cerned with the de­sign of radiation-​resistant high-​frequency cir­cuits for space travel. In ad­di­tion to the power con­sump­tion, the chal­lenges here also lie in en­sur­ing re­li­able op­er­a­tion under some­times harsh en­vi­ron­men­tal con­di­tions, such as the tem­per­a­ture range, ex­po­sure to cos­mic ra­di­a­tion and dif­fi­cult radio prop­a­ga­tion con­di­tions (in satel­lites). Spe­cific cir­cuit so­lu­tions are de­vel­oped for this. To sup­port this, sim­u­la­tion meth­ods and de­sign strate­gies are fur­ther de­vel­oped in order to bet­ter model ra­di­a­tion ef­fects on high-​frequency cir­cuits and to min­i­mize their ef­fects on the per­for­mance of the ICs.

Re­search top­ics

  • wake-​up re­ceiver
  • trans­mit and re­ceive cir­cuits for wire­less sen­sor net­works
  • Impulse-​Radio Ultra-​Wide Band (UWB) trans­mit­ting and re­ceiv­ing cir­cuits for use in wire­less com­mu­ni­ca­tion, lo­cal­iza­tion in build­ings and radar
  • ana­log read­out cir­cuits for sen­sors
  • in­te­grated power man­age­ment
  • radiation-​proof high-​frequency cir­cuits for space ap­pli­ca­tions
  • rad­hard de­sign of RF cir­cuits

Re­search re­sults

Two dif­fer­ent Im­pulse Radio-​UWB trans­mit­ting and re­ceiv­ing cir­cuits were de­vel­oped, which are used on the one hand for wire­less com­mu­ni­ca­tion over short dis­tances in dif­fi­cult en­vi­ron­men­tal con­di­tions and on the other hand for high-​precision lo­cal­iza­tion ap­pli­ca­tions in build­ings. They meet the UWB reg­u­la­tory re­quire­ments in Eu­rope and the USA. They are equipped with in­ter­nally con­trol­lable sleep modes in order to re­duce the av­er­age power con­sump­tion with­out re­strict­ing func­tion­al­ity. One of the two so­lu­tions is com­pat­i­ble with the IEEE 802.15.4a stan­dard, al­lows com­mu­ni­ca­tion in 4 RF chan­nels be­tween 6.0 and 8.5 GHz and en­ables the use of dif­fer­ent data rates from 0.85 Mbit/s to 27.24 Mbit/s. The sec­ond so­lu­tion uses a pro­pri­etary com­mu­ni­ca­tion scheme and is spe­cially op­ti­mized for highly ac­cu­rate dis­tance de­ter­mi­na­tion (bet­ter than 1 cm) with a high up­date rate. This so­lu­tion en­ables the highly pre­cise lo­cal­iza­tion and nav­i­ga­tion of au­tonomously dri­ving and fly­ing ve­hi­cles, for ex­am­ple in build­ings where GPS is nei­ther avail­able nor ac­cu­rate enough.

Tran­sim­ped­ance am­pli­fiers (TIA) and VCSEL dri­vers, which are re­quired at the in­ter­face be­tween the op­ti­cal fiber and the elec­tronic world, have been de­vel­oped for the use of fiber optic com­mu­ni­ca­tion in satel­lites (e.g. com­mu­ni­ca­tion satel­lites with very high data through­put). In ad­di­tion, the group can draw on many years of ex­pe­ri­ence in the de­sign of fre­quency syn­the­siz­ers with the high­est per­for­mance for space ap­pli­ca­tions. The cir­cuit de­signs are sup­ported by the­o­ret­i­cal re­search con­tri­bu­tions on the mod­el­ing of phase noise ef­fects and cir­cuit ap­proaches to min­i­mize them.

Dr. Gunter Fis­cher

IHP 
Im Tech­nolo­giepark 25
15236 Frank­furt (Oder)
Ger­many

Phone: +49 335 5625 440
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