A Low-Energy Ultra-Wideband Internet-of-Things Radio System for Multi-Standard Smart-Home Energy Management

Abstract

This work presents an Internet of Things (IoT) system for home energy management based on a custom-designed Impulse Radio Ultra-Wideband (IR-UWB) transceiver that targets a generic and multi-standard control system. This control system enables the interoperability of heterogeneous devices: it integrates various sensor nodes based on ZigBee, EnOcean and UWB in the same middleware by utilizing an ad-hoc layer as an interface between the hardware and software. The paper presents as a first the design of the IR-UWB transceiver for a portable sensor node integrated with the middleware layer, and also describes the receiver connected to the control system. The custom-designed low-power transmitter on the sensor node is fabricated with 130 nm CMOS technology. It generates a signal with a 1.1 ns pulse width while consuming 39 μW at 1 Mbps. The UWB sensor node with a temperature measurement capability consumes 5.31 mW, which is lower than the power level of state-of-the-art solutions for smart-home applications. The UWB hardware and software layers necessary to interface with the control system are verified in over-the-air measurements in an actual office environment. With the implementation of the presented sensor node and its integration in the energy management system, we demonstrate achievement of the broad flexibility demanded for IoT.