Co-design of a Low-power RF Receiver and Piezoelectric Energy Harvesting Power Supply for a Wireless Sensor Node

.A low-voltage RF CMOS receiver front-end and an energy harvesting power circuit for a piezoelectric source are presented as a co-designed solution for a Wireless Sensor Node. A MOSFET-only Wideband balun LNA with noise cancelling and a 0.6 V supply voltage is designed in conjunction with a passive mixer. The passive mixer operates in current mode, allowing a minimal introduction of voltage noise and a good linearity. The receiver front-end reaches a total voltage conversion gain of 31 dB, a 0.1-5.2 GHZ bandwidth, an IIP3 value of -1.35 dBm, and a noise figure inferior to 9 dB. The total power consumption is 1.95 mW. The energy harvesting power circuit consists of an active full bridge cross-coupled rectifier followed by a low-dropout (LDO) regulator, and it is able to guarantee a power output of 6 mW with a regulated output voltage of 0.6 V, for typical vibration patterns.