Abstract:

Power consumption is a serious challenge to designers of RF transceivers for use in distributed wireless sensor networks since the transceiver must always be powered on for possible incoming packets. In this paper, we propose to combine optimization of the integrated transceiver hardware and the medium access control protocol. By analyzing key factors of lowpower hardware architecture and using a simplified media access control protocol for wake-on-radio, a low power RF transceiver is designed. Test results show that power consumption of the proposed RF transceiver is more than 10 times lower than conventional equipment, satisfying the practical requirements.

Key words: RF transceiver, wireless wake-on-radio, wireless sensor networks