Low power wake-up receiver based on ultrasound communication for wireless sensor network

Abstract

Wireless sensor network (WSN) consists of base stations and sensors nodes to monitor physical and environmental conditions. Power consumption is a challenge in WSN due to activities of nodes. High power consumption is required for the main transceiver in WSN to receive communication requests all the time. Hence, a low power wake-up receiver is needed to minimize the power consumption of WSN. In this work, a low power wake-up receiver using ultrasound data communication is designed. Wake-up receiver is used to detect wake-up signal to activate a device in WSN. Functional block modelling of the wake-up receiver is developed in Silterra CMOS 130nm process technology. The performance of the wake-up receiver has been analyzed and achieving low power consumption which is 22.45μW. A prototype to demonstrate a wireless sensor node with wake-up receiver has been developed incorporating both ultrasonic and RF for internal and external communication respectively. We achieve 99.97% of power saving for 10s operation in the experimental setup for the WSN with and without wake-up receiver. Wake-up receiver used in WSN save power and prolong the lifetime of batteries and thus extending the operational lifetime of WSN.