A 900MHz CMOS RF Transceiver Including Digital Baseband and Hardware-MAC for IEEE 802.15.4/ZigBee Applications

This paper presents a fully-integrated RF transceiver operating from 860 to 930 MHz. The device parameters are compliant to the IEEE 802.15.4 standard. The analog portion of the chip contains a direct-conversion receiver, a fractional-N PLL, a direct-conversion transmitter and a TR-switch. Digital baseband signal processing as well as MAC support are also implemented on the same chip. Only minimal external components are needed to form a complete wireless network application two low-cost crystals, the PLL loop filter, an antenna and a low-cost 8bit microcontroller. Therefore, this chip is one of the most integrated 802.15.4 transceiver ICs presented to date. The input sensitivity is better than -100dBm. The chip is fabricated in a 0.25um CMOS technology with MIMcapacitors, deep n-well and a thick top metal layer.