A 2.5 µWatts two stage wake-up receiver for Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

An ultra low power wake-up receiver for Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) applications is presented. The proposed wake-up receiver is composed of two stages. The first stage is a low-power low-sensitivity stage that acts as a `sentinel' and continuously monitors the channel, while the second stage is a conventional low-power wake-up receiver. The 2.44GHz two-stage receiver has a sensitivity of -72dBm when the transmitted signal power is 0dBm. The power consumed during sleep mode is 2.5μWatts and 41μWatts in the wake-up receiver active mode with a 0.5V supply voltage. The power consumption is nearly one order-of-magnitude below previously published wake-up receiver designs for WSNs.