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A low-voltage low-power injection-locked oscillator for wearable health monitoring systems

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Abstract

This paper reports a low-voltage low-power injection-locked oscillator suitable for short range wireless transmitter applications in a wireless body area network (WBAN). Low-power transmitter with high efficiency is a major design challenge for short range wireless communication. Unlike conventional transmitters used for cellular communication, injection-locked transmitter shows reduced power consumption and high transmitter efficiency. The core block of an injection-locked transmitter is an injection-locked oscillator. In this work a low-voltage low-power injection-locked LC oscillator has been designed and fabricated employing self-cascode structure and body-terminal coupling. The proposed oscillator has been realized using 0.18-μm RF CMOS process. Experimental results indicate that the prototype oscillator can operate with a supply voltage as low as 0.9 V and consumes only 1.4 mW of power. The relatively low-voltage and low-power operation of the design makes it highly suitable for low-power transmitter applications.

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Acknowledgment

The authors would like to acknowledge MOSIS for providing the opportunities for fabricating the integrated circuit chip under MOSIS Educational Program (MEP).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Engineering Science, Sonoma State University, Rohnert Park, CA, 94928, USA

    M. R. Haider

  2. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN, 37996, USA

    S. K. Islam

  3. Department of Mechanical, Aerospace and Biomedical Engineering, The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN, 37996, USA

    M. R. Mahfouz

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  1. M. R. Haider
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  2. S. K. Islam
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  3. M. R. Mahfouz
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Correspondence to S. K. Islam.

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Haider, M.R., Islam, S.K. & Mahfouz, M.R. A low-voltage low-power injection-locked oscillator for wearable health monitoring systems. Analog Integr Circ Sig Process 66, 145–154 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10470-010-9513-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10470-010-9513-5

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