Commercially Viable Ultra-Low Power Wireless

Abstract

This chapter looks at various practical aspects of architecting and designing low power wireless radios and systems-on-chip for applications such as consumer wearables, industrial automation etc. The chapter starts with a discussion on the need for industry accepted protocols for low power wireless and aspects in these protocols that lend themselves to low power implementations. With these protocols in place, we then look at practical design techniques of the RF/analog components, followed by a look at the Physical layer and the MAC and conclude the section by looking at the overall SoC design techniques for proper energy management. The chapter concludes by looking at the upcoming IEEE 802.11ah standard and discuss how this is adapted in an advantageous manner for low power wireless applications.