New chip for waking up small wireless devices could extend battery life – Eurekalert
Excerpt:
The wake-up receiver is an ultra-low power chip that continuously looks out for a specific radio signal, called a wake-up signature, that tells it when to wake up the main device. It needs only a very small amount of power to stay on and do this–22.3 nanowatts in this case, about half a millionth the power it takes to run an LED night light.
A key part of this receiver’s design is that it targets higher frequency radio signals than other wake-up receivers. The signals are in the frequency of 9 gigahertz, which is in the realm of satellite communication, air traffic control and vehicle speed detection. Targeting a higher frequency allowed researchers to shrink everything, including the antenna, transformer and other off-chip components down into a much smaller package–at least 20 times smaller than prior nanowatt-level work.
This wake-up receiver can also do something else that other nanowatt-powered receivers cannot: perform well over a wide temperature range. For this receiver, performance is consistent from -10 C up to 40 C (14 F to 104 F). Typically, performance in low power wake-up receivers drops if the temperature changes by even just a few degrees. “For indoor use, this is not a big deal. But for outdoors use, it needs to work over a wide temperature window. We specifically addressed that in this work,” Mercier said.
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