A MEMS-BASED TUNABLE RF CHANNEL-SELECTING SUPER-REGENERATIVE TRANSCEIVER FOR WIRELESS SENSOR NODES

An electromechanical circuit comprising a capacitive-gap RF MEMS resonator embedded in a positive feedback loop with functional MEMS-based tunable RF channel-selecting radio Unlike previous super-regenerative receivers, this rendition harnesses Q around 100,000 and voltage-controlled also allows this same device to operate as an FSK transmitter, should permit a large range of usable RF frequencies, from the INTRODUCTON ranging from on-chip MEMS devices providing compact and low phase-noise reference oscillators [1, 2], to band-selecting RF front-end In particular, MEMS-based communication offers a viable path board sensors collect and transmit data through a mesh network while data collection in applications ranging from industrial or environmental been made towards such goals [4], the power consumption of current Capacitive-gap MEMS devices have emerged as one option that Q) that make possible the narrow Q such resonators has been demonstrated below 100 μW [1], even In this paper, one such electromechanical circuit comprising cf harnesses the high Q tuning [8] of its capacitive-gap transduced disk resonator to enable loop oscillator with FSK modulation enabled via an applied voltage on the MEMS input electrodes, this transmitter offers direct carrier THE REGENERATIVE TRANSCEIVER antenna signal power in the resonance passband results in a slow rise with received power on resonance, signal couples into the positive VCON restarts oscillation, allowing each bit to be decoded in a A MEMS-BASED TUNABLE RF CHANNEL-SELECTING SUPER-REGENERATIVE TRANSCEIVER FOR WIRELESS SENSOR NODES Tristan O. Rocheleau, Thura Lin Naing, Jalal Naghsh Nilchi, and Clark T.-C. Nguyen