Microelectronics Journal ] (]]]]) ]]]–]]]

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Microelectronics Journal
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/mejo

Super-regenerative receiver at 433 MHz

Joa~ o Paulo Carmo n, José Carlos Ribeiro, Paulo Mateus Mendes, José Higino Correia
University of Minho, Dept. Industrial Electronics, Campus Azurém, 4800-058, Guimaraes,
~ Portugal

a r t i c l e i n f o abstract

Article history: This paper presents a receiver for operation in the 433 MHz ISM band. The selected architecture
Received 30 June 2010 explores the super-regeneration phenomena to achieve a high sensitivity for applying in wireless
Received in revised form implantable microsystems. This radio-frequency (RF) chip can be supplied with a voltage of only 3 V for
14 February 2011
demodulating signals with powers in the range (  100,  40) dB. The codulation (modulation and
Accepted 16 February 2011
coding) scheme of the binary data is a variation of the Manchester code combined with on/off keying
(OOK) modulation. The AMIS 0.7 mm CMOS process was selected for targeting the requirement to
Keywords: fabricate a low-cost receiver, whose prototype was integrated in a die with an area of 5  5 mm2. Also,
Super-regeneration this receiver is fully compatible with commercial transmitters for the same frequency.
RF receiver
& 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Super-regenerative receiver
CMOS

1. Introduction latest solutions use wires for supplying the implantable devices
and for transmitting data to these same devices [4].
Invasive and implantable biomedical devices used for diag-
nostic and therapy, ranging from neural [1] to video-capsule
endoscopy systems [2] are emerging innovative technologies 2. Receiver design
and they are expected to originate significant business activity
in the near future. The success of such systems is in part due to 2.1. The frequency of operation
the advent of microtechnologies, which made possible the min-
iaturization of several sensors and actuators, as well their inte- The selection of a frequency for an implantable device is easy
gration with readout and communication electronics. Wireless to do. First, the sizes of these devices must be as minimal as
implantable microsystems constitute a breakthrough in the way possible. In this context and as it is of general knowledge, the
the internal pathologies can be treated. This means that the radio- antenna is one of the most critical subsystems in wireless
frequency (RF) chips can play an important role. In the context of communications, which means that the antenna must be small
implantable microsystems, the main contribution of this paper is enough to comply with size constraints of the microsystems to
the presentation of a super-regenerative receiver at 433 MHz. An not compromise the desired miniaturization. The size reduction
important advantage inherent to this receiver is to be compatible can be a problem because the antenna must be designed for
with transmitters commercially available in the market. In this transferring the highest possible power to the receiver. In the
sequence of ideas, the target application for this receiver is in context of implantable devices, the size shortening of antennas
wireless microsystems for stimulating three nerves of the verteb- can introduce additional problems of the impedance matching [7].
ral column, according to the desire of the patient, who presses a Additional issues include the biocompatibility and the bandwidth
push-button to induce micturition and erection (in the case of broadening for avoiding secondary effects related to frequency
males). The solution to send the electrostimulation commands shifts. However, the environmental issue (and the most forgotten
can be a box containing a commercial off-the-shelf emitter one) that limits the performance of an antenna (either transmit-
module at 433 MHz using the same coding and modulation ting or receiving antenna) is operating inside a lossy medium.
schemes of the receiver (e.g., codulation scheme [3]). The need This means that contrary to what happens in the free-space, the
for such transmission mode is because an RF chip solution is more medium constituted by the human tissue will dominate the
suitable and reliable than the traditional approaches because the radiation performance of the whole RF link [8]. The antennas
can be integrated with RF chips using either the on-package, or
the on-chip or even the on-wafer technique. In case of on-package
integration, the antenna is coupled into the package where the RF
n
Corresponding author. chip is supported. This first technique is the most simple of all.
E-mail address: [email protected] (J. Paulo Carmo). The on-chip integration requires more than one integration

0026-2692/$ - see front matter & 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.mejo.2011.02.009

Please cite this article as: J. Paulo Carmo, et al., Super-regenerative receiver at 433 MHz, Microelectron. J (2011), doi:10.1016/
j.mejo.2011.02.009
2 J. Paulo Carmo et al. / Microelectronics Journal ] (]]]]) ]]]–]]]

process for more than one technology, which can lead to a muscle and for fat, respectively. The difficulty is even more evident
situation where the technology for fabricating the RF chip can when looking at these parameters varying with frequency, as
be incompatible with the one used for fabricating the antenna. described in [16] where a disparity of values are presented: er ¼ 53,
Finally, the technique that seems to be promising is the on-wafer s ¼1.10 S m  1 and er ¼51.6, s ¼1.56 S m  1 for 418 and 916.5 MHz,
because wafer-level-packaging (WLP) techniques for joining het- respectively. This difficulty can also be used in a positive way, as it
erogeneous technologies are offered by the industry with a happened with the work done by Karacolak et al. [19] for continu-
relatively low-price. This last technique is especially suitable for ously measuring the items of glucose (the variations of the electric
integrating patch-antennas that are easy to package with the RF parameters are used for measuring the sugar concentration). The
chips (due to their planar shape) [9]. A variety of antennas with a previous parameters were used for obtaining the skin-depth for
variety of shapes and physical placement are related in the 433 MHz, 2.4 GHz and 5.7 GHz, whose values were observed to be
literature, as it is in the work done by Soontornpipit et al. [10] much equal between them. This means that for high frequencies, the
who fabricated implantable patch antennas with spiral and path-loss cannot be the only criterion to follow.
serpentine shapes. The work from Mendes et al. [11] exploits In the studies carried out by Siwiak [20], the muscle tissue of the
the third dimension to fabricate small antennas with relatively human body was modeled as a lossy wire antenna for simulating its
good radiation characteristics. Finally, the research group of Chow interaction with radiowaves. More precisely, the human body was
et al. [12] explores an uncommon (but very innovative) metho- modeled as a cylinder of saline water with frequency dependent
dology that makes profit of cardiovascular stents to receive RF electrical parameters. These studies resulted in skin-depths of
signals inside the human body. approximately 60 and 26 mm for 433 MHz and 2.4 GHz, respec-
Previous works of biomedical applications at the frequency of tively [20]. These statements help even more to support the use of
2.4 GHz [5], and the investigation of new frequencies [6] and new 433 MHz with the less but still acceptable losses for implantable
geometries [11] allowed the fabrication of small antennas to microsystems.
integrate in wireless microsystems [13,14]. This makes the selec-
tion of the most suitable frequency, one of the more decisive 2.2. The super-regeneration principle
aspects in the design of RF transceivers. Normally, the desired
range, baud-rate and power consumptions are key-aspects in the The super-regeneration principle was accidentally discovered
design to take into account for selecting the operation frequency. by Edwin Armstrong in 1922 [21]. This principle is based on the
At a start-up point, the range limits the maximum usable switching between a stable and a (deliberated) non-stable status.
frequency, because the loss suffered by the radiowaves in the Fig. 1(a) shows a simplified schematic of a super-regenerative
free-space increases with the distance. The precise modeling of receiver, where a resonant oscillator (whose oscillation frequency,
the propagation channel inside the human body in conjunction f (Hz), is tuned to f¼ (2p)  1(LC)  1/2) can be seen. The produced
with the equation of skin-depth, d (m), gives a rough estimation resonances are maintained when the switch S is closed because
of the radiowaves penetration. The averaged parameters help to current is supplied by an external electronic circuit (with a given
obtain the skin-depth and the path-loss characteristics of the transconductance, Gm (S)) to compensate the leakage current
propagation medium. However, the simple consideration of path- across the loss resistance, Rp (O) (due to the non-zero serial
loss is not simpler because as stated by Scanlon et al. [15], the resistance of the inductance L and to the non-infinite parallel
electrical parameters of the surrounding tissue around the RF resistance of the capacitor C). As showed in Fig. 1(b), the current,
receiver and the body’s structure have a strong influence on the Ix (A), is supplied by an external circuit and it must be such that
radiation pattern of the receiving antenna. The main conse- Rp ¼Vx/Ix, thus the equivalent negative resistance, Rneg ¼  Rp (for
quences of this are difficulties due to fading caused by radiation making RnegJRp ¼ N) must be Rneg ¼  1/Gm ¼  1/[Ix/Vx]¼Vx/(  Ix).
pattern fragmentation especially observed in the azimuthal plane. In fact, when the switch is closed, the receiver is operating in the
This happens because the human body is composed by a variety logarithmic mode with the self-sustained oscillations being
of tissues comprising the skin, fat, muscle, bone, nerve, among allowed to reach their maximum amplitude. In the situations
others, it is required to do an averaging of the several electric when the switch is opened, the oscillations start to decay because
parameters. A common role of thumb consists of applying a factor there is no more injection of current to overcome the leakage in
of 2/3 to the muscle, indicating that this is the dominating type of the loss resistance, Rp. The opening of the switch is an important
tissue in an average and healthy human subject [16]. It is a task because the oscillations must be stopped (or extinguished)
difficult task to obtain both the electric conductivity, s (S m  1), for restarting the super-regeneration process.
and the dielectric constant, er, as the needed parameters for The clock signal in Fig. 1(a), Vquench (V), (with the period Tquench (t))
calculating the actual path-loss. Nevertheless and independent is called the quenching signal and it either opens or closes the switch
of the electrical parameters that are used, the following skin- S during Tquench/2 s in order to allow the oscillator to start the
depth equation can be used for obtaining an estimative of the oscillations and to stop the oscillations. The oscillations envelope
expected path-loss [12,17]: (that is limited by the supply voltage) increases exponentially after
passing some instants of the switch closing. The time that lasts
0 u 0sffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi 1ffi11
vffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
um e0 er @ 18s 2 AC
u  
9
@2p10 fGHz t 0
d¼B 1þ 1 A ðmÞ ð1Þ
2 fGHz er

where e0 ¼10  9/(36p) F m  1, m0 ¼4p10  7 H m  1, are the electric

Vquench
permittivity and the magnetic permeability for the free-space Vquench =
Ix
(note that (e0m0)-1/2 ¼c), respectively. The quantity fGHz is the RF Ix
frequency expressed in giga-cycles per second. Rneg =-Rp
Rp C L Rneg= Rp C L
To have an idea of how difficult it is to get the parameters, the /Gm Vx
cortical bone can present an electrical conductivity, s, of
0.1032 S m  1 and a dielectric constant, er, of 13.77 [16]. Additionally,
in [18] these values are found to be er ¼5.2, s ¼0.11 S m  1, muscle Fig. 1. (a) Simplified circuit of a super-regenerative receiver and (b) concept of
er ¼57, s ¼ 1.12 S m  1 and fat er ¼15, s ¼0.26 S m  1 for bone, for negative resistance.

Please cite this article as: J. Paulo Carmo, et al., Super-regenerative receiver at 433 MHz, Microelectron. J (2011), doi:10.1016/
j.mejo.2011.02.009
 J. Paulo Carmo et al. / Microelectronics Journal ] (]]]]) ]]]–]]] 3

Fig. 3. Block diagram of the super-regenerative receiver at 433 MHz.

Fig. 2. Signal envelope in a super-regenerative receiver.

between the switch closing and the voltage increasing is dependent

on the power of the RF signal in the antenna. Fig. 2 shows two Vquench
situations of oscillations: with and without an RF signal in the 15
antenna. As it can be observed, the oscillations start sooner in the
presence of RF signals. The area enclosed by the envelope has a 16
logarithmic relationship with the RF input power. Thus and since this Vquench
operation mode is very sensitive to the RF power, it is possible to
discriminate with great accuracy the presence or the absence of an
OOK (on/off keying) modulated RF carrier. This operation mode is
called super-regenerative and it requires the periodic extinction of
2 3
the oscillations to discriminate the new presence or absence of the 12
L 13
RF carrier in order to decode the new OOK symbol. This operation is
done with the help of the quenching signal, which is internally 1 2
Rp
generated by dividing the output of the counting circuit, e.g., the 11 14
signal Vcount. 1
C
2

2.3. A survey with the best and most recent state-of-the-art Vref 2 8 1 4 9
Vref 2

antena 10 antena
The super-regenerative architecture allows the fabrication of 1 7 2

receivers with high sensitivity and high simplicity of construction Vref1 5

and low power consumption [22]. However, despite these posi-
tive points, this architecture was left forgotten for a long period of Vquench 6
time due to inherent poor selectivity and frequency instabil-
ity [23]. The interest in the super-regenerative receivers stated to
grow in the recent years with a tentative to make such receivers Fig. 4. Complete schematic of the front-end with the antenna, which comprises
the following subsystems: (a) the LC oscillator that connects to the (b) quenching
with commercial off-the-shelf components [24], culminating with
circuit; (c) the oscillations extinction circuit; (d) the backward to the antenna
a fully on-chip solution fabricated in a 0.8 mm BiCMOS pro- isolator (buffer number 1) and (e) buffer number 2 to isolate the LC oscillator and
cess [25]. This last solution was one of the first successful the subsequent circuits of the receiver.
approaches for obtaining integrated RF chips with receivers based
on the super-regenerative architecture. Since these first steps
were done, a wide variety of circuits were published in the
As illustrated in Fig. 4(a), the selected topology for the LC
literature for a wide number of applications fabricated with the
oscillator was of complementary cross-coupled type with a dual
available processes. The work done by Chen et al. [26] resulted in
pair of n- and p-type MOSFETs. The MOSFETs M1, M2, M3 and M4
a receiver fabricated in a 0.13 mm CMOS process and able to
provide the negative resistance effect, Rneg (O). The parallel pair of
operate at 2.4 GHz with passband tuning. The super-regenerative
passive components composed by the capacitor C (F) and by the
receiver fabricated by Moncunill-Geniz et al. [27] also operates at
inductance L (H) provide the feedback between the two pairs of
2.4 GHz and was conceived for high-speed data transfer purposes
MOSFETs M1/M2 and M3/M4. The condition to make the oscilla-
(e.g., 11 Mbps). Finally, the work proposed by Moncunill-Geniz
tions to grow must be such that the gain of the oscillator is
et al. [28] pushes the super-regenerative concept further by
9Gm9Rneg ¼9Gm9Rp ¼9gm(N) +gm(P)9Rp Z2. Apparently, the previous
presenting two new architectures for achieving non-coherent
equation violated the Barkhausen criterion [29] and the state-
detection of direct-sequence spread spectrum (DSSS) signals.
ment formerly presented (e.g., Rneg ¼  1/Gm), but this is while the
To finish, it is expected that the potential for use the super-
oscillations are growing until the saturation and the MOSFETs
regenerative in modern applications did not reach the end-of-line
start to operate in the saturation region. Thus, the Barkhausen
and new developments are expected in the future.
criterion will apply in this situation and 9Gm9Rneg ¼1.
The MOSFET M5 uses the reference voltage Vref1 ¼0.93 V to limit
2.4. The architecture of the receiver the bias current to 10 mA, while the MOSFET M6 (a part of the
quenching circuit) is controlled by the signal Vquench to switch on
Fig. 3 shows the block diagram of this super-regenerative and off the LC oscillator. The passive components of the LC
receiver. As it can be observed, this super-regenerative receiver is oscillator are selected to have a resonant frequency of 433 MHz.
composed by a resonant LC oscillator, two buffers, a quenching The part (c) of the circuit in Fig. 4 (the antenna front-end) is a
circuit and an envelope detector. transmission gate (synchronized with the quenching signal) to

Please cite this article as: J. Paulo Carmo, et al., Super-regenerative receiver at 433 MHz, Microelectron. J (2011), doi:10.1016/
j.mejo.2011.02.009
4 J. Paulo Carmo et al. / Microelectronics Journal ] (]]]]) ]]]–]]]

short-cut the two output terminals of the LC oscillator during its oscillator to the envelope detector. As is it is illustrated in Fig. 6,
disabling, thus decreasing the extinction time of the oscillations. such a purpose is achieved with a differential amplifier (with the
The part (d) of the antenna front-end is a cascade current source OUT1/OUT2 inputs and the Vsingle output). The voltages at the
and it is used to couple the RF signal from the antenna to the LC inputs of the differential amplifier are V1 ¼VCM +VRF(t) and
oscillator. Thanks to its cascade topology, the backward isolation is V2 ¼VCM VRF(t), whose common mode voltage, VCM (V), must be
high, thus the coupling of the oscillatory signals into the antenna is such that VCM rVdd  IdsðM23 Þ R1  Vth for saturating all the MOSFETs.
low. In this sequence of ideas, the receiver contains an output The single-ended RF signal is converted to a sequence of pulses
buffer (buffer number 2 in Fig. 3 and in Fig. 4(e)) to isolate the LC after passing the envelope detector and the level adjusting circuit.
oscillator from the rest of the receiver in order to minimize the As it can be observed in Fig. 6(b), the capacitor C (F) filters the
load effect and to not interfere with the correct operation of the single-ended signal to remove the abrupt variations. The created
oscillator (e.g., minimizing the contribution for the phase and effect is similar to envelope detection. However, the amplitude of
frequency noise in the generated oscillations). The buffer number the signal Vsingle (V) is low and must be amplified. This is done
2 uses a differential source follower, whose gain (that is less than with a common source topology constituted by the resistor R4 (O)
unity) was selected to minimize the attenuation of the oscillatory and by the n-MOSFET M27. The two further inverters (constituted
signal and is Av ¼[1+(W14/L14)1/2(W13/L13)  1/2]  1 ¼ 0.8. by the MOSFETs M28–M31) create a digital signal from the filtered
As it was said before, the quenching circuit supervises the single-ended voltage, Vsingle. The demodulated signal, Vdemodulated
super-regeneration process and at the same time it provides a (V), has a pulsed shape in the presence of RF signals at the
synchronized control signal to short-circuit the outputs of the LC antenna and its frequency is the same as the quenching signal,
oscillator, which in the meanwhile was switched off, thus Vquenching. The output signal is null without RF signals, thus for this
decreasing the time of oscillatory signal extinction. Fig. 5 shows reason it is necessary to use a variation of the Manchester code for
both (a) oscillator number 2 of Fig. 3 and (b) the quenching signal sending an information bitstream.
generator. The second oscillator is a Pierce piezoelectric-type
oscillator and uses a piezoelectric crystal (with a high quality
factor) to generate a stable signal for controlling the quenching 3. Results
switch. The quenching signal is obtained from a signal with a
frequency of 4 MHz after a division by eight, resulting in a signal Fig. 7 shows several signals inside the receiver in a response to
with a frequency of 500 kHz. an RF signal with an amplitude of 100 mV. It is important to note
A differential topology was selected for implementing the LC that the differential signal given by the single-ended signal
oscillator due to its improved noise immunity, thus a differential- obtained from the difference OUT1–OUT2 is correctly filtered,
to-single-ended conversion circuit is needed to connect this thus the envelope detection is correctly done. The amplified

17

RF

18

20 22 Vquench

Vquench

C1 C2 19 21

Fig. 5. Electronic schematic of the (a) oscillator number 2 and (b) quenching circuit.

R4 29 31
R2 R3 Vsingle Vdemodulated
Vsingleout
27
28 30
C
1 2
25 26
R1

23 24

Fig. 6. Electronic circuit of the demodulator, which is composed by (a) a differential-to-single-ended converter, (b) an envelope detector and (c) a level adjusting circuit.

Please cite this article as: J. Paulo Carmo, et al., Super-regenerative receiver at 433 MHz, Microelectron. J (2011), doi:10.1016/
j.mejo.2011.02.009
 J. Paulo Carmo et al. / Microelectronics Journal ] (]]]]) ]]]–]]] 5

Fig. 7. Simulations showing (a) differential RF signal at the antenna, antenna IN1–antenna IN2 (mV), (b) quenching signal, Vquench (V), (c) differential signal at the output of
the LC oscillator, OUT1–OUT2 (V), (d) filtered version of the signal at the end of the differential-to-single-ended converter, Vsingle (V), (e) amplified version of the single-
ended signal, Vsingleout (V) and (f) pulsed signal at the output of the receiver, Vout (V).

Please cite this article as: J. Paulo Carmo, et al., Super-regenerative receiver at 433 MHz, Microelectron. J (2011), doi:10.1016/
j.mejo.2011.02.009
6 J. Paulo Carmo et al. / Microelectronics Journal ] (]]]]) ]]]–]]]

version, Vsingleout (V), of the single-ended signal is then obtained 100 mV and 100 mV. This amplitude range can be used to obtain
and gives rise to a pulsed signal in the receiver (which further in the power range of operation:
conjunction with a coding scheme will allow the discrimination of  2 
ARF
the received binary symbol, e.g., the received bit). Pin ¼ 10 log10 ¼ 20 þ 20 log10 ðARF ÞðdBÞ ð2Þ
100
As shown in Fig. 8(b), this receiver was designed for transmit-
ting binary data modulated in OOK coded with a modified version The calculation of RF power signal is done in a straightforward
of the Manchester code (e.g., a kind of Biphase code). The carrier is form, resulting in the [  100,  40] dB range. This large dynamic
injected during the first 80% of the bit duration for transmitting a range has potential for implantation in humans because the
‘‘0’’. In the opposite situation, a ‘‘0’’ is transmitted when the receiver is tolerant to amplitude fluctuations in the RF signal.
carrier is injected during 20% of the bit duration after its As shown in Fig. 8, the signal at the output of the receiver
suppression on the initial 80% of bit duration. Fig. 8(c) shows presents a pulsed shape with a frequency equal to those in the
the pulse-shaped signal at the output of the receiver, where the quenching signal. The 20%/80% modified version of the Manchester
possibility to discriminate the received bitstream without ambi- coding imposes the existence of at least one or four pulses at
guities can be observed. the output when either a ‘‘1’’ or a ‘‘0’’ is transmitted, thus the
During the simulations, the amplitude of a differential RF maximum baud-rate, Rb (bps), must be equal to one fifth part of the
unmodulated signal, antenna IN1  antenna IN2 (V), (e.g., a con- quenching frequency, fquenching (Hz), which for the illustrated case is
tinuous 433 MHz carrier) was varied between 0 V and 200 mV. Rb ¼20000/5¼4 Kbps. Moreover, the quenching signal can be used
The receiver responded correctly with a pulsed signal output – for clock synchronization purposes in further base-band circuits
see Fig. 8(c) – for RF signals with amplitudes, ARF (V), between without the need to use additional circuits for doing such a task.

Fig. 8. Simulations showing (a) quenching signal, Vquench (V) at 500 KHz, (b) differential RF signal at the antenna IN1–IN2 (V) and (c) signal at the pulsed output of the
receiver, Vout (V).

Table 1
Comparison of RF receivers found in the best state-of-the art with the one presented in this paper.

Receiver Frequency (GHz) Technology Sensitivity (dBm) Power consumption (mW) Voltage (V) Modulation and coding

This paper 0.433 0.7 mm  70 4.4 3 OOK and Biphase

[21] 1 0.35 mm  107 1.2 1.4–3

[22] 1 0.8 mm  105 3.6 2.4 OOK

[25] 1 BiCMOS  98 1.2 2
[26] 2.4 0.13 mm  90 2.8 1.2

[27] 2.45 Bipolar  81 1.75 1.2 OOK (Gaussian bit envelope)

[28] 2.4  90 350 5 OOK and DSSS

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 J. Paulo Carmo et al. / Microelectronics Journal ] (]]]]) ]]]–]]] 7

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Please cite this article as: J. Paulo Carmo, et al., Super-regenerative receiver at 433 MHz, Microelectron. J (2011), doi:10.1016/
j.mejo.2011.02.009