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Design of Radio-Frequency Transceivers For Wireless Sensor Networks
Design of Radio-Frequency Transceivers For Wireless Sensor Networks
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1. Introduction
The SoC (System-on-Chip) design for the WSN (Wireless Sensor Networks) nodes is the most
significant technology of modern WSN design. There are a large amount of nodes in a WSN
system, the nodes are densely deployed either inside the environment or very close to it.
Each node is equipped with a sensor, an ADC (Analog-to-Digital Converter), a MCU (Mi-
cro Controller Unit), a storage unit, a power management unit, and a RF (Radio-Frequency)
transceiver, as shown in Fig. 1, so that it can sense, store, process, and communicate with other
sensors using multi-hop packet transmissions. The basic specifications of WSN are reliability,
accuracy, flexibility, expenses, the difficulty of development and power consumption. Because
all the nodes are battery-powered, power consumption is the most important specification of
WSN.
The core part of a WSN node is the RF transceiver, which is used to realize the wireless com-
munication among the nodes. For a common used commercial chip, the distribution of power
consumption is shown in Fig. 2, where TX and RX represent the transmitting mode and re-
ceiving mode of the transceiver. We can see that the RF part consumes the most power. Be-
sides, modern RF design is composed of so many subjects that it requires IC designers to
have sufficient knowledge. As a result, the IC design of RF transceivers becomes the most
challenging research topic in the WSN field.
As the applications of WSN become more and more widespread, many companies have de-
veloped highly-integrated chips for RF transceivers. The main specifications of several com-
mercial chips are shown in Table. 1. The common characters of these chips can be summarized
into several aspects: 1)a low data rate, 2)low power consumption, 3)high sensitivity, 4)rela-
tively low output power, and 5)a simple modulation scheme.
There are several ways to achieve low power consumption in WSN: 1)reduce the radiated
power by using ad-hoc networks and multi-hop communication, 2)optimize the trade-off be-
tween communication and local computing, 3)design more power-efficient RF transceivers,
and 4)develop more energy-efficient protocols and routing algorithms. And the third one is
what we will talk about in this chapter.
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Design of Radio-Frequency Transceivers for Wireless Sensor Networks 3
Chips FBa (MHz)DRb (kbps)Powerc (mW) Sensitivity (dBm) OTPd (dBm) MSe
TR1000 916.5 115.2 14.4/36 -98 -1.2 OOK/ASK
TRF6903 300∼1000 19.2 60/111 -103 -12∼8 FSK/OOK
CC1000 300∼1000 76.8 30/87.8 -107 -20∼10 FSK
CC2420 2400 250 33.8/31.3 -95 0 O-QPSK
nRF905 433∼915 100 37.5/90 -100 -10∼10 GFSK
nRF2401 2400 0∼1000 75/39 -80 -20∼0 GFSK
a FB: The working Frequency Band of the chips.
b DR: The Data Rate of the transceivers.
c Power: The Power consumption for receiving/transmitting mode.
d OTP: The Output Transmitting Power.
e MS: The Modulation Scheme of the transceiver.
Table 1. The main specifications of several commercial RF chips common used in WSN.
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Fig. 3. A typical OOK transceiver.
A typical FSK transceiver is shown in Fig. 4. For the transmitter, the PLL directly digital mod-
ulation can be adopted (Perrott et al., 1997). This technology will be described in detail in
section 4.4. The data stream from baseband is shaped firstly, and then input into a PLL to gen-
erate the FSK signals. Then the FSK signals are amplified by a PA and emitted by an antenna.
In the receiver, the received signals are amplified by a LNA, and down-converted by a mixer
that is followed by a filter to depress the interferences and the high-frequency component. The
FSK demodulator is easy to realize since only the zero-cross points contain data information,
and sometimes a zero-cross detector is enough. However, in many applications, the influence
caused by frequency offset needs to be avoided. The power consumption of such transceiver
is relatively low because the modulation and demodulation of FSK signals is easy to realize.
As we analyzed above, OOK can realize a high data rate, but the communication distance
is short; FSK transceivers can be used for long-distance communication, but the data rate is
often not high. Therefore, a multi-mode transceiver in which OOK and FSK can be compatible
with each other may be a good choice. The OOK modulation can be implemented by directly
modulating the output power of the PA in Fig. 4.
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Design of Radio-Frequency Transceivers for Wireless Sensor Networks 5
Fig. 4. An typical FSK transceiver.
the narrow pulse width of a few nanoseconds. However, the disadvantage is also serious:
the spectrum is too wide and the emitting power is limited, so the single-hop transmission
distance is very short (usually less than 10 m).
The IR (Impulse-Radio) UWB transceiver can be implemented with ultra-low power con-
sumption. A typical example is shown in Fig. 5, where the architecture is similar to that of
the typical OOK transceiver. The transmitter has a very simple structure, which is composed
of an impulse generator and a PA. The impulse generator can be realized by a few logical
gates. The receiver includes a LNA, a mixer as a squarer, an integrator and a comparator.
In some applications, the architecture is even simpler than that of common OOK transceivers.
Therefore, ultra-low power can be obtained with UWB transceivers, which fits the short-range
WSN requirement very well.
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Fig. 5. A typical UWB transceiver.
A common transceiver architecture is shown in Fig. 6. In the transmitter, there is I/Q dual-
path chains to realize the vector-signal transmitting. The coding, spreading, shaping, and so
on are all finished in the digital domain. The data stream from digital baseband is converted
to analog signals by two DACs (Digital-to-Analog Converters), and then the interferences
and harmonics are filtered out by two filters. Two mixers are adopted for I/Q dual-path up-
conversion and modulation. The phase difference of the two LO (Local Oscillation) signals
input to the two mixers is 90◦ . At last, the I/Q signals are summed by an adder, amplified by a
PA, and then emitted through an antenna. Assume the signal in the I path is a, the signal in the
Q path is b, and then the transmission signal can be expressed as a + jb. Therefore, all the QAM
(Quadrature Amplitude Modulation) signals in the constellation diagram can be generated by
this transmitter. In the receiver, the received signals are amplified by a LNA firstly, and then
down-converted by two mixers into I/Q dual-path signals. After being filtered by a filter,
the analog signals are converted to digital domain by two ADCs. At last, the demodulating,
de-spreading, synchronizing, decoding and so on are all done in digital domain. Such is the
common architecture of SDR (Software Defined Radio), all the modulation schemes can be
realized in this transceiver. Generally, the WSN usages have the characters of low cost, low
power and a low data rate, so such complex architecture of SDR is not necessary in many
WSN applications since simple analog circuits can be adequate. However, for specially WSN
applications that need a complex modulation scheme, the SDR transceiver is indispensable.
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Design of Radio-Frequency Transceivers for Wireless Sensor Networks 7
Fig. 6. A common architecture of transceivers.
level specifications to every individual submodules. Some of the conclusions in this section
are referenced to Gu’s book (Gu, 2005).
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For the AWGN (Additive White Gaussian Noise) channel, the noise at the input of a receiver
chain can be equivalent to thermal noise, and the sensitivity of a receiver can be expressed as:
where BW is the receiver noise bandwidth in Hz, NF is the overall noise figure of the receiver
in dB, and CNRmin is the minimum CNR (Carrier-to-Noise Ratio) required for obtaining the
required error rate.
As two different radio transmitters may use the same frequency in actual applications, RF re-
ceivers must have a certain ability to avoid the influence of co-channel interferences. Another
important specification of receiver is the ACS, which measures the ability to receive a desired
signal at the operating channel frequency in the presence of adjacent/alternate channel sig-
nals at a frequency offset from the assigned channel. The blocking characteristic is similar to
the ACS, but it measures the anti-interference ability of an unwanted interferer at frequencies
other than those of adjacent channels. The adjacent/alternate channel interference signal is
usually modulated, while the blocking interferer is often defined as a continuous waveform
tone. Both the adjacent/alternate channel selectivity and the blocking characteristics of a re-
ceiver are determined mainly by the characters of the channel filter, and the phase noise and
spurs of the LOs in the adjacent/alternate channel bandwidth or around the unwanted inter-
ferer. For most wireless mobile systems, the desired signal level at receiver input for testing is
defined as 3 dB above the reference sensitivity level Rmin (Gu, 2005):
For the single-conversion receiver, as shown in Fig. 6, it can be derived the ACS or the blocking
characteristic ACSadj/alt/block to have the following form:
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Design of Radio-Frequency Transceivers for Wireless Sensor Networks 9
where Npn is the average phase noise over the receiver bandwidth at a frequency offset equal
to the space between the interference and the carrier, Nsp is the magnitude of the spurs at a
frequency offset equal to or nearby the space between the interference and the carrier, Iin is the
intermodulation interference tone, and ∆R is the rejection to the interference tone of a filter.
Nn f denotes the receiver inherent noise converted to its input port:
where I IP3lna is the LNA input third intercept point, PTx is the transmitter output power at
the antenna port in dBm, ILdRx is the receiver side insertion loss of the duplexer in dB, RdTx
is the duplexer receiver side filter rejection to the transmission in dB, and C is a correction
factor associated with waveform magnitude fluctuation and interference tone offset frequency,
which is approximately -3.8 dB and -5.8 dB for the cellular and PCS band CDMA mobile
station receivers, respectively (Gu, 2005).
Then another specification can be introduced, that is the dynamic range, which is generally de-
fined as the ratio of the maximum input level to the minimum input level at which the circuit
satisfied the required bit error rate. A common used specification called SFDR (Spurious-Free
Dynamic Range) bases the definition of the upper end of the dynamic range on the intermod-
ulation behavior and the lower end on the sensitivity. The SFDR can be expressed as:
2( I IP3 − NF )
SFDR = − SNRmin (11)
3
where I IP3 is the input third intercept point of the RF front end, SNRmin is the required
minimum SNR (Signal-to-Noise Ratio) of the IF circuits. The required I IP3 can be calculated
by equation (6), then the SFDR of a receiver can be obtained by equation (11).
Two strong in-band interference tones may cause a zero-IF or low-IF receiver to be completely
jammed if the second-order intercept point of the receiver is not high enough. The two strong
tones may generate in-channel interferences due to the second-order distortion of the receiver.
The maximum level of the two equal blocking interference tones can be expressed as (Gu,
2005): R −CNR
Nn f
1 d,i min
Iblock = 10lg 10 10 − 10 10 + I IP2 (12)
2
where I IP2 is the input second intercept point of the receiver.
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The main problem of the low-IF receiver architecture is the image rejection since the IF is so
low that it is difficult to separate the image from the desired signal by filters. The imbalance
between I and Q channel signals in the low-IF receiver determines the possible maximum
image rejection. The image rejection IR and the imbalances of the I/Q amplitude and the
phase have the following relationship:
For the transmitter, the modulation accuracy is represented by EVM, which is defined as the
mean square error between the samples of the actual and the ideal signals, normalized by the
average power of the idea signal. The EVM of transmitters is influenced by the inter-symbol
or inter-chip interference, the close-in phase noise of synthesized LO, the carrier leakage, the
I and Q imbalance, the nonlinearity, the in-channel bandwidth noise, the reverse modulation
of LO, and so on.
The influence caused by inter-symbol or inter-chip interferences can be obtained by:
+∞
EV Misi = ∑ ∆Iisi 2 (k) (18)
k=−∞
t0 +∆t
t −∆t | hir ( t + kTs )| dt
h (t + kT )
ir 0 s
∆Iisi (k) = = 0 t +∆t (19)
hir (t0 )
0
|h (t)|dt
t0 −∆t ir
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Design of Radio-Frequency Transceivers for Wireless Sensor Networks 11
where hir (t) is the impulse response of the pulse-shaping filter, k is equal to ±1, ±2, ±3, . . .,
Ts is the period of a symbol, and 2∆t is the during of a sampling pulse.
The influence caused by close-in phase noise of synthesized LO can be obtained by:
N phase
EV M pn = 2 × 10 10 × BWl f ,pll (20)
where Nphase is the average phase noise in dBc/Hz within the PLL loop bandwidth, and
BWl f ,pll is the bandwidth of the PLL loop filter in Hz.
The carrier leakage is mainly caused by the DC offset of the baseband, the LO-to-RF leakage
and the IF-to-RF leakage. The influence on EVM caused by carrier leakage can be obtained by:
CLo f f set CLlo CLi f
EV Mcl = + + (21)
10 10 10
where CLo f f set , CLlo and CLi f represents the leakage results from the DC offset, the LO-to-RF
leakage and the IF-to-RF leakage, respectively.
The EVM caused by the I and Q imbalance can be expressed as:
IR
EV Miq = 10 10 (22)
where PTx is the output power level, and Pδ is the amplitude probability density function of
the signal.
The EVM caused by in-channel bandwidth noise can be expressed by:
Nibn − PTx
EV Mibn = 10 10 (25)
where Nibn is the integrated noise over the channel bandwidth, and PTx is the transmission
power in dBm.
The transmission signals may be reflected from the load of the modulator, then the reflected
signals and their harmonics may modulate the LO if the frequency of the carrier or the har-
monics of the reflected signals is equal to LO frequency. Then reverse modulation occurs. The
EVM caused by reverse modulation is:
Nrm
EV Mrm = 10 10 (26)
where Nrm is the integrated reverse modulation noise of the synthesized LO over the trans-
mission signal bandwidth below the LO level.
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The overall EVM of the transmission signal can be expressed as:
2
EV Mtotal = EV Misi + EV M2pn + EV Mcl
2 2
+ EV Miq (27)
2 2 2
+ EV Mnonlin + EV Mibn + EV Mrm +...
The ACPR specification is generally defined as ratio of the power integrated over an assigned
bandwidth in the adjacent/alternate channel to the total desired transmission power. The
ACPR can be expressed as:
af +∆B
fa SPD ( f )d f
ACPR = f + (28)
o BW/2
f o − BW/2 SPD ( f ) d f
where PTx is the transmission signal power at the output of the power amplifier, PAR is the
peak-to-average ratio of the random noise. In the mobile communication systems, the ad-
jacent/alternate power may be tested in a bandwidth ∆B that is different from the desired
transmission signal bandwidth BW.
We only discuss the noise emissions that are those located outside of alternate channels here.
In general, we like to have lower gain power amplifier for achieving low noise emission, but
this is completely opposite to the gain setting of the power amplifier to obtain a good ACPR
performance. The noise emission in mW/Hz of the transmitter has an expression as:
where Pn,in in mW/Hz is the noise at the transmitter input, GTx is the overall transmitter gain,
NFTx is the overall noise factor of the transmitter, and kT0 = 10−174/10 mW/Hz.
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Design of Radio-Frequency Transceivers for Wireless Sensor Networks 13
• The reflection coefficient at the input port and the isolation between the output port and the
input port;
• The power consumption;
The most important specification of the LNA is the noise figure since the first stage of a re-
ceiver chain decides the noise performance of the whole system. One of the common used
LNAs is the inductively source degenerated type, and a typical design example is shown in
Fig. 7(a). M1 is a common-source amplifier transistor, LS is the source degenerated inductor,
L G is the gate inductor, VI N is the input Port, and VOUT is the output port; M2 is a common-
gate transistor that is used for isolation and gain enhancement; the load ZL can be a resistor,
a inductor or a inductor-capacitor tank. This structure has a large gain and a low noise figure,
but the input reflection is a problem. There is a trade-off between the noise figure and the
input impedance matching.
Fig. 7. (a)An inductively source degenerated LNA. (b)The common-gate input type.
Another common used LNA is the common-gate input type, as shown in Fig. 7(b). If the
transconductance of the common-gate transistor M3 is gm , then the input resistance is equal
to 1/gm . Therefore, the input matching of common-gate LNA is easier to realize compared to
the source degenerated LNA. However, the noise performance is poor, since the common-gate
amplifier has a low gain.
The WSN receivers usually have a high sensitivity, as shown in Table 1. According to equa-
tion (1), the sensitivity is proportional to the noise figure of the RF front end. Therefore, in
WSN applications, we often adopt the inductively source degenerated LNA assisted by some
low-noise technologies.
4.2 Mixer
The mixers in transceivers can be divided into two types: 1)the up-converting mixers and
2)the down-converting mixers. The up-converting mixers are used in the transmitter, while
the down-converting mixers are used for the receiver. The specifications of a mixer can be
summarized into:
• The working frequency including RF frequency, LO frequency, and IF frequency;
• The noise figure;
• The third intercept point;
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• The second intercept point (for zero-IF or low-IF receivers);
• The voltage or power conversion gain;
• The isolation between the RF port and the LO port, the RF port and the IF port, and the LO
port and the IF port;
• The magnitude and phase imbalance between I and Q channel down converters (for the
receivers and transmitters that use I and Q dual-path converters);
• The power consumption;
A classical mixer is known as the Gilbert cell, as shown in Fig. 8. IB is a current source, RF +
and RF − are the differential RF input ports, LO+ and LO− are the differential LO input ports,
and the output differential currents are IOUT + and IOUT −; M1 and M2 convert the input RF
voltage into current, and M3-M6 are used as switches for mixing.
The Gilbert mixer is a typical example of active mixers, which have high gain, low noise, but
poor linearity. Another type of mixers are called passive mixers, which usually have low gain,
large noise and high linearity. The passive mixers can be divided into two types: 1)voltage-
mode mixers: the MOS switches are used for voltage switches, and loaded with high resis-
tance. Because of the nonlinearity of the switches, distortions will be enlarged when the am-
plitudes of RF and IF signals are increased and the switches are modulated. 2)Current-mode
mixers: the MOS switches are used for current switches, and loaded with low resistance. So
the amplitudes of RF and IF signals are relatively low in current-mode mixers, then the linear-
ity is improved. A typical example of current-mode passive mixers is shown in Fig. 9 (Valla
et al., 2005). The input I I N is a differential current signal, the output VOUT is a voltage sig-
nal. Transistors M1-M4 are used for switches that are controlled by the LO signals LO+ and
LO−. An OTA (OperaTional Amplifier) together with resistors R1, R2 and capacitors C1, C2
is adopted to amplify and filter the signals. Two additional capacitors C3 and C4 are used to
generate an extra pole to suppress the amplitude. The LNA and mixers are often designed
and tested together to realize an optimized trade-off among gain, noise figure and linearity
for different applications.
The distribution of WSN nodes is random, and the distance between two nodes may be very
short or very long, so the dynamic range of the transceivers is very important. According
to equation (11), in order to improve the SFDR performance, the noise figure needs to be
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Design of Radio-Frequency Transceivers for Wireless Sensor Networks 15
Fig. 9. A typical current-mode passive mixer.
decreased and the IIP3 needs to be enhanced. Therefore, a combination of a low-noise induc-
tively source degenerated LNA and a current-mode passive mixer can be adopted for WSN
usages.
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Amplitude-Frequency Characteristic Phase-Frequency
Type
Pass Band Stop Band Transition Band characteristic
Monotonic Gentle Monotonic
Butterworth Flat Moderate
Decreasing Decreasing
Monotonic Steep Monotonic
Chebyshev Fluctuant Poor
Decreasing Decreasing
Monotonic Slowly Monotonic
Bessel Flat Excellent
Decreasing Decreasing
Steep Monotonic
Ellipse Fluctuant Fluctuant Poor
Decreasing
Table 3. The characteristics of different filters.
In wireless transceivers, there is a special kind of filter named complex filter, which is usu-
ally used in low-IF receivers for image rejection. A classical complex filter is designed in
1995 (Crols & Steyaert, 1995). Fig. 10 shows the block diagram, which has I/Q dual-path in-
puts and I/Q dual-path outputs. The input of the Q path Q I N is 90◦ delay of the input of the
I path I I N , and the output of Q path QOUT is also 90◦ delay of the output of the I path IOUT .
That is Q I N = − jI I N and QOUT = − jIOUT . The transfer function of this complex filter can be
expressed as:
A
Hc f ( jω ) = (32)
1 + j(ω − ωc )/ωo
where ωc is the central frequency, and 2ωo is the double-sideband bandwidth. It is equivalent
to a low-pass filter’s pass band moved by ωc , and then the transfer curves of positive and
negative frequency become asymmetric. As a result, the image can be rejected.
As shown in Table 2, low-IF transceivers has the advantages of easy to be integrated and
immune to DC offset, so the low-IF SDR transceiver is adopted in many WSN applications.
Besides, the data rate of WSN is usually not very high, then the IF can be relatively low and
gm-C filters are not necessary. Therefore, an active-RC complex filter is suitable for such WSN
receivers because of their low power, large dynamic range and image rejection function.
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Design of Radio-Frequency Transceivers for Wireless Sensor Networks 17
For WSN transceivers, we tend to design low-power, full-integrated and fast-settling PLL.
The power of the PLL is mainly limited by these modules: 1)VCO (Voltage-Controlled Os-
cillator), 2)prescaler, and 3)the buffer connected at the output of VCO. Therefore, the power
reduction of these modules is significant to the low-power design of PLL.
For full-integrated design, the chip area needs to be decreased. In a typical PLL, the LF (Loop
Filter) and the inductors in LC-tank VCO take up the largest chip area. In order to decrease
the area of LF, some one has proposed a discrete-time architecture (Zhang et al., 2003). For the
applications in low-frequency bands, the inductors will be large if the resonant frequency of
the VCO is low, so the VCO is required to be designed at a high frequency with a frequency
divider connected after it.
The settling speed of PLL is decided by the loop bandwidth. Too Large bandwidth brings
not only fast settling, but also large in-band noise and spurs. As a result, there is a trade-off
between the settling speed, and the phase noise and the spur performance. How to set the
trade-off depends on the requirement of the transceiver system.
As we referenced in section 2.2, the PLL can be adopted for directly digital modulation, and
such method is proposed by Perrott in 1997 (Perrott et al., 1997). The architecture of such PLL
based transmitter is shown in Fig. 12. The data stream can be shaped by a filter firstly, then the
shaped data are input into the sigma-delta modulator in order to change the dividing ratio. As
a result, the output frequency can be modulated by the variation of dividing ratio according
to the input data, and the FSK signals can be generated in this way. A PA is connected at the
output of the PLL so that the FSK signals can be emitted through an antenna. Generally, the
data rate can not be larger than the bandwidth of the PLL. Although some one has proposed
a compensation technology with a digital filter whose transfer function is the reciprocal of
PLL’s (Perrott et al., 1997), mismatch and inaccuracy depress the performance in actual de-
signs. As a result, we would rather enlarge the bandwidth of PLL to obtain a relatively high
data rate.
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For WSN usages, the data rate is often not high, so such PLL directly digital modulation is a
reasonable choice for common frequency and phase modulation schemes, such as FSK, MSK,
and so on. As a result, mixers can be moved away, the cost and power consumption of the
WSN transmitter can be saved a lot.
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Design of Radio-Frequency Transceivers for Wireless Sensor Networks 19
at frequencies substantially below f T , which is the cut-off frequency. Usually, one transistor
fails to turn completely off before the other turns on, then the efficient is deteriorated.
The class-E PA uses a high-order reactive network that provides enough space to shape the
switch voltage to have both zero value and zero slope at switch turn-on, then the switch loss
is reduced. The efficiency can approach theoretically 100% with idea switches. The normal-
ized power capability is about 0.098, which is worse than class-A PA. The class-E PA is more
demanding of its switch performance than even class-A PAs because of the poor power capa-
bility and the reduced efficiency due to switch turn-off losses.
The termination of a class-F PA appears as an open circuit at odd harmonics of the carrier
beyond the fundamental and as a short circuit at even harmonics, while the class-F−1 employs
a termination that appears as an open circuit at even harmonics and as a short circuit at the
odd harmonics. The class-F PA is capable of 100% efficiency in principle. The normalized
power capability of class-F PAs is about 0.16, which is half that of the class-D PAs.
In summary, there is a trade-off between the efficiency and the linearity. For receivers with
constant-envelope modulation, such as FSK, high-efficiency PAs can be adopted; for linear
operation such as ASK (Amplitude Shift Keying), or systems with high ACPR requirement,
high-linearity PAs can be adopted.
The high-efficiency PAs such as class-E are usually used in WSN transceivers, as the power
consumption is the most significant specifications of WSN system.
4.6 IF circuits
The function of IF circuits includes demodulation, data decision, and clock recovery. There
are two main kinds of IF circuits: 1)the digital scheme. In common receivers, an ADC is
connected after the RF front end, and the frequency detecting, data decision and received
signal strength indicating are all realized in digital domain, then the performance of the circuit
can be easily improved in digital domain. Such is the general architecture for SDR as we
described in section 2.5. However, the ADC usually consumes a large amount of power, and a
high-linearity AGC circuit is required before the ADC. 2)The analog scheme. For low-power
applications such as WSN, the CMOS analog resolution is sometimes a reasonable choice since
the power consumption can be saved a lot.
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• SNR (Signal-to-Noise Ratio): The theory equation of SNR for a N-bit ADC can be expressed
as:
SNR = 6.02N + 1.76 (33)
• SNDR (Signal-to-Noise and Distortion Ratio): The power of the noise and harmonics di-
vided by the power of signal.
• SFDR (Spurious Free Dynamic Range): The ratio of the signal’s power to the maximum
harmonic’s power.
• ENOB (Effective Number of Bits): The ENOB can be calculated by:
ENOB = (SNDR − 1.76)/6.02 (34)
• THD (Total Harmonic Distortion): The ratio of all the harmonics’ power to the signal’s
power.
Besides the specifications above, another very important parameter is power consumption. In
the aspect of architecture, the ADCs can be divided into flash, SAR (Successive AppRoxima-
tion), folding, pipeline, sigma-delta, and so on.
For the ADC connected after the sensor in a WSN node, SAR ADCs may be the best choice
since the data collection is executed at most of the time. There are two reasons: 1)The only
power hungry module in a SAR ADC is the comparator, so the overall power consumption
is low; 2)the circuit structure of a SAR ADC is simple, so the cost of chip area is small. In the
WSN transceivers, the data rate is not high and the modulation scheme is simple, so a low
bandwidth and low precision ADC is usually enough. Therefore, a SAR ADC may also be a
good choice for WSN transceivers.
The specifications of DAC also includes DNL, INL, SNR, SNDR, SFDR, power consumption,
and so on. The DACs are often used in transmitters, as shown in Fig. 6, the shaped digital
waves are converted to analog signals that are sent to up-converting mixers for modulation.
As a result, the performance of the DACs will affect the EVM and ACPR of the transmitters.
5. Conclusion
The goal of this chapter is to give a brief manual for WSN transceiver design. Section 1 gives
an introduction of WSN and the RF transceivers for WSN. The WSN transceivers are classi-
fied by both modulation schemes and architectures in section 2. How to calculate and assign
the system specifications are described in section 3. The design of key modules is analyzed
briefly in section 4. The readers is expected to master a top-to-down design method for WSN
transceivers through the chapter.
6. References
Crols, J. & Steyaert, M. (1995). An analog integrated polyphase filter for a high performance
low-IF receiver, Symposium on VLSI Circuits, Digest of Technical Papers, pp. 87–88.
Gu, Q. (2005). RF System Design of Transceivers for Wireless Communications, Springer Sci-
ence+Business Media, LLC,.
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Wireless Sensor Networks: Application-Centric Design
Edited by Yen Kheng Tan
ISBN 978-953-307-321-7
Hard cover, 492 pages
Publisher InTech
Published online 14, December, 2010
Published in print edition December, 2010
Over the past decade, there has been a prolific increase in the research, development and commercialisation
of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) and their associated technologies. WSNs have found application in a
vast range of different domains, scenarios and disciplines. These have included healthcare, defence and
security, environmental monitoring and building/structural health monitoring. However, as a result of the broad
array of pertinent applications, WSN researchers have also realised the application specificity of the domain; it
is incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to find an application-independent solution to most WSN problems.
Hence, research into WSNs dictates the adoption of an application-centric design process. This book is not
intended to be a comprehensive review of all WSN applications and deployments to date. Instead, it is a
collection of state-of-the-art research papers discussing current applications and deployment experiences, but
also the communication and data processing technologies that are fundamental in further developing solutions
to applications. Whilst a common foundation is retained through all chapters, this book contains a broad array
of often differing interpretations, configurations and limitations of WSNs, and this highlights the diversity of this
ever-changing research area. The chapters have been categorised into three distinct sections: applications
and case studies, communication and networking, and information and data processing. The readership of this
book is intended to be postgraduate/postdoctoral researchers and professional engineers, though some of the
chapters may be of relevance to interested master’s level students.
How to reference
In order to correctly reference this scholarly work, feel free to copy and paste the following:
Bo Zhao and Huazhong Yang (2010). Design of Radio-Frequency Transceivers for Wireless Sensor Networks,
Wireless Sensor Networks: Application-Centric Design, Yen Kheng Tan (Ed.), ISBN: 978-953-307-321-7,
InTech, Available from: http://www.intechopen.com/books/wireless-sensor-networks-application-centric-
design/design-of-radio-frequency-transceivers-for-wireless-sensor-networks
www.intechopen.com
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