A 10 mW Bluetooth Low-Energy Transceiver With On-Chip Matching

A mass-produced Bluetooth Low-Energy transceiver is presented in classic double frequency VCO architecture fabricated in TSMC 55 nm CMOS. The radio part occupies 2.9 mm(2) while the complete SoC occupies 5.9 mm(2). The transceiver consumes 11 mW when receiving at -94 dBm and 10 mW when transmitting at 0 dBm. This is roughly a factor 2 lower than benchmark mass-produced designs. The power consumption is higher than recently published experimental sliding-IF designs, but it does not suffer from their inherent susceptibility to blocking and pulling. Easy application is enabled by a fully integrated single-ended 50 Omega RFIO and combined Buck-and Boost-mode DC-DC converter.