A 1-V 1.2-mW CMOS medradio receiver for biomedical applications

An ultra-low-power low-voltage 401-406 MHz Medical Device Radiocommunications Service (MedRadio) receiver for continuous wireless communication in biomedical applications is demonstrated using 0.18-μm CMOS technology. Although using a low-IF architecture, careful consideration is done for individual block-level circuit design to minimize the overall power consumption. The receiver chain consists of a complementary current-reuse LNA, an in-phase/quadrature folded mixer, an eighth-order complex bandpass filter, a limiting amplifier chain with RSSI, and a frequency synthesizer with a quadrature VCO. The proposed receiver achieves a gain of over 80 dB, noise figure of 14 dB, image rejection of 32 dB, and phase noise of -106 dBc/Hz at 100 kHz offset while consuming less than 1.2 mW from a 1-V supply voltage with 1.8 mm ² of core die area.