The present disclosure relates to a system and method for a fully-integrated energy-detection wakeup receiver.
Wireless sensor nodes (WSNs) in Internet of Things (IoT) applications require radio to be both low-power and small-area, in order to extend the battery life time and reduce the hardware cost. Meanwhile, in some IoT applications, the slave nodes require swift response upon receiving the signals from the master node. Therefore latency is critical, meaning that the receivers of the remote sensors have to be always on or frequently on in order to meet the latency requirement.
Monitoring channels continuously by a main radio can be quite power hungry for the system, with regard to the small battery capacity for these applications. Wakeup receiver (WuRx) based approaches are widely adopted to solve such issues.
WuRx is monitoring the channel continuously instead of the main radio, and therefore has to be low-power. To minimize the power consumption of WuRx, complex modulations (e.g., frequency-shift keying (FSK), phase-shift keying (PSK)) are often avoided due to necessity of a Local Oscillator (LO) generation, which either is power-hungry or needs calibration. Instead, simple On-off keying (OOK) modulation is typically adopted for the proprietary WuRx, enabling the deployment of a low-power energy-detection based receiver architecture. However, OOK modulation cannot be provided by most of the standard compliant radios. In addition, all of the aforementioned approaches require a customized wakeup transmitter, increasing system overhead. On the other hand, constant envelope based modulation schemes, such as Gaussian frequency-shift keying (GFSK) and Half-Sine offset quadrature phase-shift keying (HS-OQPSK), are adopted by Bluetooth low energy (BLE) and IEEE802.15.4 standards, which sheds light on a new wakeup radio design approach.
Some conventional systems include a WuRx, which directly operates with BLE advertising packets, but such systems suffer from large latency (˜seconds), which can be a problem for latency-critical applications.
It is an object of the present disclosure to provide a fully-integrated wakeup receiver for latency-critical applications using a 2-dimensional wakeup pattern.
These and other objects of the present disclosure are set forth, at least in part, as defined in the independent claims. Aspects of additional or alternative embodiments are set out in the dependent claims.
According to a first aspect of the present disclosure, a system is disclosed. The system includes a wakeup receiver communicatively coupled to a communication channel. The wakeup receiver is configured to monitor an input signal of the communication channel. The input signal includes a plurality of packets. Each packet includes a respective packet length. The wakeup receiver is further configured to down-convert the input signal to a DC signal. The system also includes an analog to digital converter (ADC) configured to digitize the DC signal and provide an ADC output. The system further includes a digital baseband (DBB) module configured to apply an automatic gain control (AGC) loop to the ADC output to provide a gain-controlled signal. The DBB is also configured to determine a received signal strength indication (RSSI) based on the gain-controlled signal. The DBB is additionally configured to, for each packet, determine the respective packet length and compare the RSSI and respective packet length with a two-dimensional template. The DBB is also configured to, based on the comparison, determine an interrupt condition and, based on determining the interrupt condition, generate a wakeup signal.
According to a second aspect of the present disclosure, a method is disclosed. The method includes monitoring, at a wakeup receiver an input signal of a communication channel. The input signal includes a plurality of packets, each packet including a respective packet length. The method includes down-converting the input signal to a DC signal and digitizing the DC signal with an analog to digital converter (ADC) to provide an ADC output. The method also includes applying, with a digital baseband (DBB) module, an automatic gain control (AGC) loop to the ADC output to provide a gain-controlled signal. The method also includes determining a received signal strength indication (RSSI) based on the gain-controlled signal and, for each packet, determining the respective packet length. The method additionally includes comparing the RSSI and respective packet length with a two-dimensional template. The method yet further includes, based on the comparison, determining an interrupt condition, and, based on determining the interrupt condition, generating a wakeup signal.
According to a fourth aspect of the present disclosure, a digital baseband (DBB) module is disclosed. The DBB module includes an automatic gain control (AGC) loop. The DBB module is configured to apply the AGC loop to an output of an analog to digital converter (ADC) to provide a gain-controlled signal. The DBB is also configured to determine a received signal strength indication (RSSI) based on the gain-controlled signal. The DBB is additionally configured to, for each packet, determine the respective packet length and compare the RSSI and respective packet length with a two-dimensional template. The DBB is also configured to, based on the comparison, determine an interrupt condition and, based on determining the interrupt condition, generate a wakeup signal. In this way, only one packet from the main radio is needed to generate a wakeup signal.
According to a fourth aspect of the present disclosure, a method is disclosed. The method includes applying, with a digital baseband (DBB) module, an automatic gain control (AGC) loop to an output of an analog to digital converter (ADC) to provide a gain-controlled signal. The method also includes determining a received signal strength indication (RSSI) based on the gain-controlled signal and, for each packet, determining the respective packet length. The method additionally includes comparing the RSSI and respective packet length with a two-dimensional template. The method yet further includes, based on the comparison, determining an interrupt condition, and, based on determining the interrupt condition, generating a wakeup signal.
The patent or application file contains at least one drawing executed in color. Copies of this patent or patent application publication with color drawings will be provided by the Office upon request and payment of the necessary fee.
The above, as well as additional, features will be better understood through the following illustrative and non-limiting detailed description of example embodiments, with reference to the appended drawings.
All the figures are schematic, not necessarily to scale, and may show parts that elucidate example embodiments, wherein other parts may be omitted or merely suggested.
Example embodiments will now be described more fully hereinafter with reference to the accompanying drawings. That which is encompassed by the claims may, however, be embodied in many different forms and should not be construed as limited to the embodiments set forth herein; rather, these embodiments are provided by way of example. Furthermore, like numbers refer to the same or similar elements or components throughout.
A fully-integrated energy-detection WuRx with a 2-dimensional wakeup pattern is described herein, enabling demodulation of wakeup information from a standard compliant constant-envelope packet, according to example embodiments. Some embodiments may generate a wakeup interrupt signal by using only one packet, which is desirable for latency-critical IoT applications.
In example embodiments, the WuRx can be paired with an existing standard-compliant main radio transmitter, e.g., BLE. A BLE system adopts GFSK modulation, and supports two data rate modes, 1 Mbps and 2 Mbps. In other example embodiments, the WuRx can be paired with any system that uses a constant envelope input signal. In an example embodiment, there are 40 channels located at the unlicensed 2.4 GHz frequency bands, among which there are three advertisement channels located at the low, middle and high bands. This can prevent the case that all the advertisement channels are polluted by other co-existing systems, e.g., WiFi. The wakeup signal is the same as that in the BLE communication, and is transmitted on the three advertisement channels.
A conventional energy-detection based WuRx may be utilized to detect a wakeup signal with the purpose to save power, however, such energy-based WuRx will not be able to demodulate the information in the GFSK modulated packet directly. Rather, further information, such as another dedicated transmitter for wakeup and the dedicated modulation scheme such as On-Off-Keying (OOK) to generate another signal for wakeup purpose may need to be employed to demodulate the information and thus to identify a certain node in the system.
In example embodiments, a 2-dimensional wakeup pattern is introduced, utilizing a received signal strength indication (RSSI) and a length of the received packet as a two-dimensional template 100 to identify a certain wakeup signal among all the signals in 2.4 GHz band, as illustrated and described in reference to in
Another challenge of this system is to accurately measure RSSI across a large dynamic range in an energy-detection base architecture. The energy-detection is equivalent to a square function, resulting in a quadratically increased envelope due to the non-linear operation. This doubles the required linear range for the analog baseband as well as the dynamic range of the ADC, increasing overhead in power and area for the analog circuits. Alternatively, a three-stage Automatic Gain Control (AGC) loop is introduced to relax the requirements for the analog circuit, meanwhile allowing an accurate measurement with an RF input strength ranging up to −30 dBm.
The wakeup receiver 202 illustrated in
Specifically, in some embodiments, the DBB may operate in either a calibration mode or a packet detection mode. The calibration mode may be used to estimate the DC offset in order to later be able to remove the DC offset during packet detection mode and thus correctly estimate the RSSI. For example, at power-up, a foreground calibration could be performed for the WuRx with a grounded LNA input, estimating the DC offsets and the noise σn in the corresponding AGC mode. The calibration is performed based on the ADC output data. The DC offset can be calculated by averaging the ADC output data, and the noise σn can be calculated by computing the standard deviation of the ADC output data.
After the foreground calibration process, the DBB could operate in the packet detection mode where the incoming ADC samples are first compensated using the DC offset provided from the calibration. In some embodiments, the DBB may continuously check the ADC output. Once the output reaches a threshold value or falls within a predetermined range, the DBB may start to measure the packet length by counting the number of the filtered samples (e.g., a duration counter). Hence, once the measured RSSI is below the RSSI low threshold, the duration counter stops. By correlating the measured packet length and RSSI value with the template as shown in
On the other hand, misdetection and false alarms, which are undesired, can happen when the input signal approaches the sensitivity level. Some conventional systems rely on over-sampling to pursue additional gain to improve the performance, but at the cost of either higher power in DBB or huge latency (˜s) in signal processing. Since both power and latency are important in this design, a dynamically-adjusted threshold is proposed for the RSSI threshold settings to minimize the probability of misdetection with a relatively low over-sampling ratio (4×).
In some embodiments, when monitoring the channel, the RSSI low threshold is set to a minimum value to prevent the false triggering of the detection phase given by the thermal noise, as illustrated in
In example embodiments, each element of the system may be coupled to a common substrate. In some embodiments, the elements of the system are arranged on the common substrate having an area less than 1.3 mm2. In an example embodiment, a prototype 500 was fabricated in 90 nm CMOS and the core area is 1.24 mm2, as illustrated in
An example of the packet length (PL) measurement results 600 is shown in
With a −58 dBm input, >99% hit rate (defines sensitivity) is achieved at 1 Mbps, which is robust for a short range application, as illustrated in a graph 700 in
This work presented a 2.4 GHz fully-integrated wakeup receiver in 90 nm CMOS. Thanks to the proposed 2-dimensional wakeup pattern, the receiver can be paired to many popular IoT wireless standards with constant envelope modulations, while maintaining ˜100 μs latency, which makes it very attractive for short-range latency-critical IoT applications.
The present disclosure has mainly been described with reference to a limited number of embodiments. However, as is readily appreciated by a person skilled in the art, other embodiments than the ones disclosed above are equally possible within the scope of the present disclosure, as defined by the appended claims.
For example, it should be realized that, in addition to at least one electrode without galvanic contact with the living being, a system may further comprise other sensors and/or electrodes, which may or may not be in galvanic contact with the living being, for acquiring further measurements which may be used in combination with the physiological measurements acquired by the at least one electrode without galvanic contact.
While some embodiments have been illustrated and described in detail in the appended drawings and the foregoing description, such illustration and description are to be considered illustrative and not restrictive. Other variations to the disclosed embodiments can be understood and effected in practicing the claims, from a study of the drawings, the disclosure, and the appended claims. The mere fact that certain measures or features are recited in mutually different dependent claims does not indicate that a combination of these measures or features cannot be used. Any reference signs in the claims should not be construed as limiting the scope.
The present application is a non-provisional patent application claiming priority to U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 62/516,511, filed Jun. 7, 2017, the contents of which are hereby incorporated by reference.
Number | Date | Country | |
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62516511 | Jun 2017 | US |