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Description
In recent years, the push for low power wireless sensor networks has called for the introduction of RF-MEMS transceiver devices capable of operating on scavenged power. The design of ultra-low power MEMS based transceivers stands to revolutionize the fields of industrial monitoring, environmental monitoring, and biomedical imaging. Our capstone project designs a MEMS based transceiver capable of supporting these low power applications. Included are design and simulation results using transistor circuits implemented with a commercial TSMC 180nm technology. The entire system is estimated to consume 57.8uW of power at a Vdd=1.8V, duty cycled at 50%. The transceiver system implements a modified OOK modulation scheme and utilizes a MEMS resonator, an oscillator, an envelope detector, a comparator, a power amplifier, and an output buffer. The system is currently optimized for data rates of 5kHz, but can easily support much higher data rates. This design demonstrates operation at 60MHz VHF, but the tunable nature of the MEMS device allows for use of frequencies up to UHF.