IR-UWB for ambient assisted living applications

Abstract

Wireless technology has been developing fast for years and it is spreading to new areas of everyday life. One of the newest areas is healthcare and welfare sector where it can be a significant way to save costs and improve existing procedures. The coming years are going to be challenging as the population, in the developed countries especially, is ageing fast and more patients are going to need treatments. Wireless sensor network (WSN) is an emerging in wireless technology for short range indoor used for health monitoring. On the other hand, the Impulse radio ultra-wideband (IR-UWB) defined by IEEE 802.15.4a standard, comes with a number of desirable features at the physical layer for wireless communications, for example, low RF power emission, ranging, accurate position location, imaging sensing radar. In this work, the potential strengths of IEEE 802.15.4a for Ambient Assisted Living Applications (AALs) has been showed. Subsequently, an IEEE 802.15.4a RF Front-End, resilient to interferers, in 65 nm CMOS for AALs has been proposed. It consists of low noise amplifier (LNA), mixer, frequency synthesizer (LO).