Experimental analysis of power optimized waveforms for enhancing wake-up radio sensitivity

Abstract

To minimize energy consumption of state-of-the-art wireless sensor nodes, asynchronous communication transceivers are adopted, which make use of an ultra-low power wake-up radio (WUR) to minimize the active time of the energy-hungry main communication radio. This work contributes to the ambitious goal of pushing over the minimum average RF power needed to operate the WUR, thus enabling energy-efficient communication in larger areas. To reach this goal a dual-band rectifier, optimized to be loaded by an ultra-low power comparator, is used as WUR detector. Its behavior is experimentally tested under several power-optimized excitation formats. By selecting the proper excitation format the base-band comparator is enabled starting from average RF-power as low as -64.5 dBm.