A Survey of Low-Power Transceivers and Their Applications

Abstract

In wireless sensor networks (WSNs) energy efficiency and communication reliability are often conflicting requirements. Additionally, some application areas such as industrial automation or infrastructure monitoring impose strict latency bounds. Low-power receivers power consumption) together with adapted MAC protocols have the potential to meet these diverse requirements. We present an overview of state-of-the-art low-power receivers and relate their characteristics to requirements for different application areas. We compare low-power receivers to duty-cycled transceivers and present applications depending on them. For this, we use power consumption, sensitivity, and data rate as key performance figures for low-power receivers. Based on the characteristics of the applications we derive guidelines for using low-power receivers instead of duty-cycled transceivers.

Full text

A SURVEY OF LOW-POWER TRANSCEIVERS AND THEIR APPLICATIONS 1
A Survey of Low-Power Transceivers and their
Applications
Johannes Blanckenstein, Jirka Klaue, and Holger Karl
Abstract—In wireless sensor networks (WSNs) energy effi-
ciency and communication reliability are often conflicting re-
quirements. Additionally, some application areas such as in-
dustrial automation or infrastructure monitoring impose strict
latency bounds. Low-power receivers (< 1 mW power consump-
tion) together with adapted MAC protocols have the potential to
meet these diverse requirements. We present an overview of state-
of-the-art low-power receivers and relate their characteristics to
requirements for different application areas. We compare low-
power receivers to duty-cycled transceivers and present applica-
tions depending on them. For this, we use power consumption,
sensitivity, and data rate as key performance figures for low-
power receivers. Based on the characteristics of the applications
we derive guidelines for using low-power receivers instead of
duty-cycled transceivers.
I. INTRODUCTION
I
NDUSTRIAL process automation and infrastructure moni-
toring require dependable wireless sensor networks. These
application areas demand not only energy efficiency but also
reliable and timely data communication. Several Medium
Access Control (MAC) protocols are developed to specifically
fulfill these demands. A thorough review about such mission-
critical protocols and their limitations is given in [1].
A common way to reduce the energy consumption is to
turn off the transceiver periodically. Such a duty cycling can
lead to increased delay and a less reliable communication,
which contradicts the requirements dictated by mission-critical
applications. To overcome these limitations there are several
efforts to develop low-power receivers together with appro-
priate protocols. The idea is to have receivers with such a
low power consumption that it becomes feasible to keep them
turned on all the time. Depending on the target application
such a receiver can fulfill a variety of functions; among others,
it can be used as a “classical” receiver or as a wake-up receiver
(WUR). As the name indicates, a WUR is used to wake up an
otherwise powered-down node to initiate appropriate tasks. A
node will thus be woken only on demand and not periodically,
which can decrease communication delay and can enable more
time-critical protocols.
The paper is structured as follows: Section II gives an
overview about different requirements for low-power receivers,
which are depending on the application area. In Section III,
state-of-the-art low-power receivers are presented. They are
compared to each other and their benefits and limitations are
J. Blanckenstein and J. Klaue are with Airbus Group
Innovations, Dept. TX4CW, 81663 Munich, Germany e-mail:
johannes.blanckenstein@airbus.com.
H. Karl is with University Paderborn, Germany e-mail: holger.karl@upd.de.
highlighted. In Section IV, wake-up receivers are compared to
duty-cycled transceivers and their best field of application is
defined. How to use wake-up receivers in specific applications
is presented in Section V, and Section VI concludes this paper.
II. REQUIREMENTS
Depending on the application area, different requirements
are demanded from low-power receivers. The requirements are
mostly influenced by the communication range, the channel
characteristics, the message flow, and the available energy.
All these requirements have a direct impact on the key
performance figures for low-power receivers. Communication
range and channel characteristics directly influence the nec-
essary receiver sensitivity, and the message flow influences
the necessary data rate. To improve either one of them, more
energy has to be spent. Hence, the available energy is the
limiting factor for all receiver designs; typically a very low
power consumption is essential.
The requirements for four representative scenarios will
be inspected; the aeronautical case, the wireless body area
network (WBAN), smart metering, and industrial applications.
A. Aeronautical Use Case
One challenge for wireless sensor networks in the aeronau-
tical case is the high density of wireless sensor nodes [2].
The quantity of sensor nodes within an aircraft can easily
reach 1000 or more. Figure 1 shows possible locations for
sensor nodes within an aircraft, together with corresponding
applications.
Fig. 1. Placement of sensor nodes within an aircraft, together with their
corresponding applications.
It is challenging to consolidate all these applications and
their sensor nodes within one common network. With that
many nodes, a typical CSMA protocol ceases to be feasible
and a more sophisticated protocol has to be used. In [2] a
possible solution is presented; it uses a TDMA protocol with
special reliability features. However, this protocol is developed

A SURVEY OF LOW-POWER TRANSCEIVERS AND THEIR APPLICATIONS 2
for periodic applications and, therefore, in its present imple-
mentation not very well suited for event-triggered applications.
For such cases, currently, duty-cycled transceivers are used to
wake up the nodes at pre-determined points in time and then
to start the protocol. For many applications, such a wake-up
is only necessary once a day and therefore a very long duty
cycle is used and a very low energy consumption is possible.
Due to a very low duty cycle the introduced latency of the
system is very high (> 10 s) while the responsiveness of the
system has to be in the order of 200 ms, such a low duty cycle
is not feasible.
To make the system autonomous, the power supply for the
nodes is provided by an energy harvester [3] in combination
with a power management board [4]. Such an energy harvester
can provide up to 23 J per flight. With two flights a day and an
efficiency of 54 % of the power management board [4], only
288 µW are available on average. When the nodes are woken
up, they have to start a measurement and transmit these values
to a common sink. The measuring can consume a lot of energy,
therefore, the available average power is further reduced to
around 100 µW. Additionally, channel measurements [2, 5–
8] suggest a minimum required sensitivity of −80 dBm to
support a communication range of 10 m.
Hence, the requirements for a low-power receiver in the
aeronautical case are an average power consumption below
100 µW, a sensitivity better than −80 dBm, and a delay below
200 ms.
B. Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN)
A WBAN consists of devices that are all located in close
vicinity of the human body. Typical applications for WBANs
are in health care or in the multimedia sector. Reference
[9] gives an overview about WBANs in general and the
requirements resulting from its applications. As stated there,
a WBAN will consist of around 20 − 50 sensor nodes, which
are used to monitor bodily functions like the heartbeat or the
body temperature, as well as to connect multimedia devices
like microphones or head-mounted displays. Those devices can
have very different needs for data rates in the region of only
a few kb/s to several hundreds of kb/s; in sum the demands
can reach a few Mb/s.
The advantage of low-power receivers in WBANs can be
twofold: either a low-power receiver is used for low data rate
applications and will replace a “normal” receiver, or it is used
as a wake-up receiver to initiate a possible high data rate
communication. Either way, the power consumption needs to
be very limited. For example, some health care devices are
implemented inside the human body, like insulin reservoirs
or pacemakers. It is clear that with such devices a regular
battery change is no option. Additionally, because the devices
are implemented inside the body, there is a strict size constraint
for the nodes, e.g., it is not possible to use large batteries.
Therefore, the power consumption has to be as low as possible.
The short communication distance of about 1 m that the
devices have to cover can help to keep the power consumption
low. In [10] a large measurement campaign was conducted to
model the behavior of WBAN channels. A stochastic channel
model was derived from it where each link is considered
separately. The highest path loss was found around 50 dB,
with all radio links on the front side of the body. With a path
loss in the region of 40 − 50 dB the sensitivity requirements
for low-power receivers are lessened; a sensitivity of −40 dBm
would be enough to receive a signal transmitted with 0 dBm.
Without the need to have a high sensitivity even more power-
efficient designs can be implemented.
C. Smart Metering
Another field of application for low-power receivers is in
smart metering and home automation. In both cases, radio
communication takes place inside a building and the require-
ments for both are similar. The maximum communication
distance is typically about 15 m, but it has to be differentiated
if the communication takes place on the same floor or across
multiple floors. At a distance of 15 m for both cases the
path loss is in the same region but at shorter distances the
multiple-floor scenario has a larger path loss than the same-
floor scenario. In [11] a channel is characterized for both cases.
A path loss of around 100 dB was measured at a distance of
15 m. At 10 m a path loss of 100 dB was measured for the
multiple-floor scenario and a path loss of 80 dB for the same-
floor scenario. A similar behavior is described in [12] for the
same-floor scenario.
Therefore, a low-power receiver for these applications has
to have a high sensitivity. With a maximum allowed effective
radiated power (ERP) of 25 dBm in the European 868 MHz
band, a receiver should have at least a sensitivity of −75 dBm
to be able to receive packets at a distance of 15 m. But
commercially available transceivers normally have an output
power around 0 dBm. To generate an output power of 25 dBm
typically a discrete power amplifier has to be used. Assuming a
high efficiency of 50 %, additional 28 dBm (= 631 mW) has
to be spent to reach these high output power levels. Since
a very high output power is rarely possible for low-power
devices, a higher sensitivity should be used.
The required data rates for home automation / smart me-
tering applications are moderate but the acceptable delay
for a communication might be more demanding. If human
interaction is involved, a latency larger than 0.5 s might not
be tolerable. The allowed maximum energy consumption for
the smart metering / home automation area depends heavily on
the specific application. For some devices, like heat or electric
meters, the battery has to provide enough energy for around 10
years, and because of that, large and expensive batteries have
to be provided. Reducing the energy consumption of the com-
munication system can reduce the overall costs immensely.
D. Industrial Applications
Control loops have the strictest requirements in the indus-
trial applications field. Not only are they loss-intolerant but
also delay-intolerant. For control loops, a maximum allowed
delay in the order of 100 ms is common.
The wireless channel for industrial applications is similar to
the one for the smart metering / home automation applications.
The big difference is the target communication distance of

A SURVEY OF LOW-POWER TRANSCEIVERS AND THEIR APPLICATIONS 3
TABLE I
REQUIREMENTS FOR LOW-POWER RECEIVERS
communication distance sensitivity power consumption data rate delay payload size
Aeronautical case 10 m −80 dBm 100 µW 250 kb/s 200 ms 10 to 100 byte
WBAN 1 m −40 dBm 10 µW 1000 kb/s 1000 ms 5 to 4000 byte
Smart metering 15 m −75 dBm 100 µW 10 kb/s 500 ms 10 to 100 byte
Industrial 100 m −85 dBm 200 µW 250 kb/s 100 ms 10 to 200 byte
100 m. In [13] a characterization for the industrial indoor
channel is done. There, three types of topographies are dis-
tinguished: line-of-sight (LOS), obstructed line-of-sight (OBS)
with light surrounding clutter, and obstructed line-of-sight with
heavy surrounding clutter. For these three topologies channel
measurements were done in three different bands, at 900 MHz,
at 2.4 GHz, and at 5.2 GHz. From these measurements 9
different channel characteristics were derived, three for each
frequency band and three for each topology, respectively.
In [13], it was argued that the log-distance path loss model
is applicable for each characteristic and the corresponding
path-loss exponents n and the path loss values P L (d
0
) at a
reference distance d
0
= 15 m were derived. When comparing
the path loss at a distance of 100 m for the three topologies
at 900 MHz, it was verified that the path loss behaved as
assumed. The smallest path loss was observed in the LOS
case with 98 dB, followed by the OBS with light surrounding
clutter with 100 dB. The biggest path loss was observed
in the case of OBS with heavy surrounding clutter with
110 dB. For the 2.4 GHz band the behavior was similar with
100 dB, 101 dB, and 112 dB, respectively. Assuming again a
maximum transmit power of 25 dBm, a minimum sensitivity
of −85 dBm is necessary.
In industrial applications bigger devices and therefore bigger
batteries might be possible, regardless, the total cost of the
system has to be kept as small as possible. A receiver which
fulfills the sensitivity and delay requirements while fulfilling
the strict energy consumption demands can help to lower the
overall system and operation cost.
E. Summary
Depending on the application scenarios the requirements
for low-power receivers differ. For some scenarios a very
high sensitivity is necessary whereas in other scenarios a high
sensitivity is not essential. As will be shown in Section III,
power consumption, sensitivity, and data rate are competing
features and can be traded against each other; depending on
the scenario these values have to be carefully chosen.
In Table I estimates for the system requirements for low-
power receivers are given. These values are reference points
for the system development and shall help to categorize low-
power receivers; they are not meant to be strict, fixed limits
for the system requirements. As can be seen, the highest
requirement for sensitivity is given in the industrial case,
closely followed by the aeronautical and smart metering appli-
cations. Only WBAN applications have a moderate sensitivity
requirement owing to the short communication distance. The
delay and data rate requirements are closely coupled; a very
low data rate leads to a high communication delay which can
be challenging. In some receiver concepts a data rate of only
several hundred bits per seconds is possible; for instance, if
100 bytes have to be transmitted at a data rate of 1 kb/s this
would lead to a minimum delay of 800 ms. Hence, the data
rate of the low-power receivers have a direct impact on the
possible minimum communication delay. The industrial case
has the most stringent delay requirements. Regarding the data
rate, WBAN applications have the highest demand because
of possible multimedia applications and also the strictest
requirements for power consumption.
Generally, industrial applications have the highest sensitivity
and delay demands while still requiring a great need for
low power consumption. The aeronautical applications have
slightly lesser sensitivity demands but at the same time stricter
power consumption demands. The smart metering applications
have lessened overall system requirements. Lastly, for WBAN
applications a very low power consumption is clearly the
most important factor, which can be met by providing only
a moderate sensitivity.
III. LOW-POWER RECEIVER
Several concepts for low-power receivers are available [14–
58], differing in complexity and performance.
A. Technology
The technologies used for low-power receivers vary over a
wide range; from simple passive energy detection to envelope
detection with several correlation stages. Each technology
has its own advantages and disadvantages. Depending on the
requirements for the low-power receivers, the best technology
has to be selected carefully. Some are better for high data rates,
others for high sensitivity or very low power consumption.
1) Modulation: The first distinctive feature is the chosen
modulation format. Most of the concepts use either ampli-
tude modulation in its binary form On-Off-Keying (OOK),
or they use frequency modulation—Frequency-Shift-Keying
(FSK)—also in its binary form. Only four of the presented
concepts differ here. The concept in [50] uses binary Pulse-
Width-Modulation (PWM), Reference [28] uses a multi-stage
approach beginning with an OOK modulated signal followed
by a PWM symbol. The other concepts use Phase-Shift-
Keying (PSK); [57] uses the binary form BPSK and [51] uses
the quaternary form Quadrature-Phase-Shift-Keying (QPSK),
which could also be implemented as two parallel BPSK
demodulators.
The advantage of FSK (and also PSK) over OOK is that it
is less susceptible to noise and fading. Additionally, because
of the constant power level of the carrier, the amplifier design

A SURVEY OF LOW-POWER TRANSCEIVERS AND THEIR APPLICATIONS 4
is simpler with FSK and there is no need for an adaptable
threshold to decide which symbol was received. OOK has the
advantage of overall implementation simplicity which can be
transferred into energy efficiency. For instance, just a simple
envelope detector can be used to detect if the carrier frequency
is turned on. Such a detector can easily be implemented
by using a diode and a resistor-capacitor oscillator circuit
as a bandpass filter. All the concepts that have a power
consumption below 10 µW are using OOK. This can be seen
in Figure 2.
0.01
0.1
1
10
100
1000
10000
1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 2012 2014
power consumption [µW]
year of publication
OOK
FSK/PSK
Fig. 2. Power consumption of the low-power receivers using the OOK [14–
47] and FSK/PSK [48–58] concepts
2) Implementation: The second distinctive feature is
the implementation of the concept. Several variants are
used: super-regenerative receivers, superheterodyne receivers,
injection-locked local oscillators (LO), envelope detectors with
or without an intermediate frequency (IF), and in two cases en-
velope detectors followed by purely analog correlation stages.
The concepts in [14, 15, 20, 27, 32, 36, 43, 44, 47, 48] are us-
ing a super-regenerative receiver design. They all have a
data rate above 100 kb/s with a sensitivity varying over a
broad range. Two designs [22, 35] are using envelope detectors
followed by purely analog non-coherent correlators and, thus,
are able to reach very low power consumption values. Five
concepts are using duty cycling [18, 25, 29, 30, 46], where [18,
29, 30, 46] are duty cycling even within a bit having an ON-
time in the range of only 100 ns. This reduction in sampling
time decreases the power consumption to a level of several
µW at a low data rate (< 1 kb/s) without increasing the
latency due to duty cycling. The concepts in [45, 53, 57, 58] are
using injection-locked oscillators for either creating a power
efficient “virtual LO” or creating a power efficient FSK /
PSK demodulator. The concepts in [18, 21, 31, 33] are using an
uncertain IF-architecture where the LO can vary in the range
of 100 MHz from its desired frequency and therefore can be
implemented more power-efficiently. In [25, 41, 52, 57] no IF
is used, the symbols are demodulated directly which again can
simplify the receiver design immensely. A very power-efficient
design is possible but at the cost of a low sensitivity and the
need of an external surface acoustic wave (SAW) filter.
Regardless of the particular specifications of the designs, the
common important characteristics of all low-power receivers
are power consumption, data rate, and sensitivity. None of
these technologies can clearly be identified to outperform the
others in any of these characteristics. All parts of a receiver
strongly influence its performance; the interaction between
them accounts for the overall power consumption although
not all technologies can use all receiver parts. Therefore, all
the low-power receivers will be compared with each other
regardless of the specific technology.
B. Comparison
1) Sensitivity vs. Power Consumption: Firstly, the power
consumption of the low-power receivers is related to their sen-
sitivity. If possible, the sensitivity is measured at a bit error rate
(BER) of 10
−3
; due to correlation stages, for some concepts
the sensitivity can only be measured at packet error rate (PER)
levels because their functional principle makes no information
available at BER level. This has to be kept in mind when
comparing the sensitivity levels. The supply voltages vary in
the range of 0.4 V − 3 V. Some concepts use multiple supply
voltage levels, meaning the actual power consumption might
be higher due to the necessity of voltage converters when
implementing the concepts on a communication platform.
The behavior of some concepts is adjustable, therefore,
these receivers will have several connected data points in the
figures. The data points of some concepts—[29, 30] in Figure 3
and [24, 53] in Figure 4—describe a vertical line, suggesting
that one receiver setting outperforms all the others. However,
this advantage is only valid for the examined parameters. As
can be seen in the corresponding figure, there is no receiver
setting which outperforms all the others. Nevertheless all data
points are drawn to indicate that several receiver settings are
feasible, even if they draw a vertical line.
As can be seen in Figure 3, it is very hard to reach a power
consumption smaller than 10 µW. Only nine concepts [22, 28–
30, 34, 35, 40, 45, 46] are below that level, where [35, 40] reach
an outstanding power consumption around 100 nW. All those
concepts can meet the moderate sensitivity demands for the
WBAN applications.
If both a small power consumption and a high sensitivity
shall be maintained the situation becomes even more challeng-
ing. As can be seen, only three concepts [23, 30, 51] consume
less power than 100 µW at a sensitivity better than −80 dBm,
fulfilling the requirements for the aeronautical applications.
For industrial applications only two concepts [51, 53] meet
the requirements of a sensitivity better than −85 dBm while
maintaining a power consumption below 200 µW.
2) Data Rate vs. Power Consumption: Secondly, the data
rate of the receivers is related to their power consumption.
Depending on the concepts, different coding techniques are
used. Some designs [19, 34, 42] use Manchester coding to be
able to recover the clock signal from the data. With Manchester
coding the net data rate is only half of the gross data rate.
Other designs [16, 22, 28–30, 34, 35, 37, 43, 50] use spreading
techniques to increase the sensitivity or to distinguish between
codes. Here, the net data rate is in the order of the spreading

A SURVEY OF LOW-POWER TRANSCEIVERS AND THEIR APPLICATIONS 5
0.01
0.1
1
10
100
1000
10000
-120 -110 -100 -90 -80 -70 -60 -50 -40 -30
power consumption [µW]
sensitivity [dBm]
[14] [15]
[16] [17]
[18] [19]
[20] [21]
[22] [23]
[24] [25]
[26] [27]
[28] [29]
[30] [31]
[32] [33]
[34] [35]
[36] [37]
[38] [39]
[40] [41]
[42] [43]
[44] [45]
[46] [47]
[48] [49]
[50] [51]
[52] [53]
[54] [55]
[56] [57]
[58] Pareto
Fig. 3. Sensitivity of the low-power receivers vs. their power consumption together with Pareto front.
factor smaller than the gross data rate. In the figures gross data
rates before spreading, correlation, coding, etc. are shown.
As can be seen, it is hard to reach high data rates while
keeping a low power consumption. Only ten designs [17,
21, 32, 33, 41, 43, 48, 54, 57, 58] reach a data rate of at least
1 Mb/s. From those only three [33, 41, 57] have a power
consumption smaller than 200 µW.
Regarding the requirements in Table I, it can be seen that for
the aeronautical and the WBAN case no low-power receiver
concept fulfills the power consumption, sensitivity, and data
rate requirements. For the industrial case only [53] and for the
smart metering case only [23, 47] fulfill all three requirements
at the same time. The characteristics of these concepts would
be sufficient to fulfill the sensitivity and data rate demands
of those applications while reducing the power consumption
dramatically.
For the aeronautical and for the WBAN scenarios currently
no low-power receiver concept fulfills all the requirements to
replace the main receiver of the system. However, a low-power
receiver implemented as a wake-up receiver can be used to
refrain from duty-cycling a main transceiver. Hence, either the
overall power consumption and the communication delay can
be reduced or at least the communication delay can be reduced
while maintaining the same power consumption a duty-cycled
transceiver would generate. The following section addresses
this more thoroughly.
IV. WAKE-UP RECEIVER VS. DUTY-CYCLED RECEIVER
A common way to reduce the power consumption of a
wireless node is to turn off all devices that are currently not
used and to duty-cycle its transceiver. With a decreasing duty
cycle the power consumption in the receiver is decreased, but,
at the same time, the mean communication delay is increased.
ON ONreceiver
period T
p
ON time T
on
unsuccsessful
transmission
transmitter
unsuccsessful
transmission
succsessful
transmission
transmit
duration T
d
OFF
Fig. 5. A 25 % duty-cycled receiver, together with a transmitter which is
sending three packets until a successful transmission occurs.
In Figure 5 the periodic behavior of a duty-cycled receiver
is depicted. The duty cycle follows
T
on
T
p
· 100 %, where T
on
is
the time the transceiver is turned on and T
p
is the duration
of the period. In this case the receiver has a duty cycle of
25 %. The receiver is only able to receive a packet correctly if
the transmit duration T
d
≤ T
on
and the packet is transmitted
during the ON time of the receiver, which means that only the

A SURVEY OF LOW-POWER TRANSCEIVERS AND THEIR APPLICATIONS 6
0.01
0.1
1
10
100
1000
10000
0.01 0.1 1 10 100 1000 10000
power consumption [µW]
gross data rate [kb/s]
[14] [15]
[16] [17]
[18] [19]
[20] [21]
[22] [23]
[24] [27]
[28] [29]
[30] [32]
[33] [34]
[35] [36]
[37] [38]
[39] [40]
[41] [42]
[43] [44]
[45] [46]
[47] [48]
[50] [51]
[52] [53]
[54] [55]
[56] [57]
[58] Pareto
Fig. 4. Gross data rate of the low-power receivers vs. their power consumption together with Pareto front.
third packet in Figure 5 can be received correctly. It is only
possible to communicate with a duty-cycled node in certain
time frames; the period P equals the maximum additional
communication delay before this frame arrives. Thus, there is
a trade-off between power consumption and communication
delay.
Additionally, when duty cycling, an overall more complex
communication protocol is needed. To keep the communica-
tion delay as low as possible, the transmitting node either has
to know beforehand at which time its communication partner
is listening or it has to transmit the packet several times until
it is certain that a listening slot of the receiving node is met.
In the first case, the synchronous schedule, the packet has to
be sent only once, but the clocks of all nodes have to be kept
synchronous. In order to do this, additional communication has
to be done which complicates the communication protocol and
might result in higher power consumption for the transmitting
node. In the second case, the asynchronous schedule, clocks
do not have to be kept synchronous. In order to keep a
low communication delay the packets have to be transmitted
several times, which also increases the power consumption for
the transmitting node. Hence, duty cycling not only increases
the communication delay but might increase the power con-
sumption for the transmitting node as well.
Following formula can be used to estimate the mean power
consumption for a duty-cycled receiver.
P
mean
=
P
switch
· T
switch
+ P
on
· T
on
+ P
off
· T
off
T
p
(1)
When calculating the power consumption, the switching time
T
switch
from the OFF state to the ON state is not negligible
which is in contrast to calculating the percentage of one period
in which a transceiver is active. According to (1) the mean
power consumption for two commercially available state-
of-the-art transceivers is calculated for varying duty cycles.
The first transceiver considered is the Atmel AT86RF212
[59], which implements IEEE802.15.4 for the 700/800/900
MHz band. The second transceiver considered is the Nordic
Semiconductor nRF51822 [60], which implements Bluetooth
LE (2.4 GHz band). The second device is a System-on-Chip,
which comprises a transceiver and a microcontroller but only
the transceiver figures are taken into account. Both devices
implement very different physical layers but both are opti-
mized for low power communication. For IEEE802.15.4 the
20 kb/s and 40 kb/s BPSK modulation as well as the 250 kb/s
O-QPSK modulation is considered. For the nRF51822 the
1 Mb/s Bluetooth LE as well as the proprietary 250 kb/s and
2 Mb/s GFSK modulation is considered.
In Table II the characteristics for the different operation
modes are shown. Regardless of the underlying physical layer,
the sensitivity decreases with an increasing data rate while
maintaining roughly the same power consumption. Within the
duration T
on
it has to be possible to transmit at least a packet

A SURVEY OF LOW-POWER TRANSCEIVERS AND THEIR APPLICATIONS 7
0.01
0.1
1
10
100
1000
0.01 0.1 1 10 100 1000 10000
power consumption [µW]
delay [ms]
[16] [19]
[22] [23]
[24] [28]
[29] [30]
[33] [34]
[35] [37]
[39] [40]
[41] [42]
[45] [46]
[47] [50]
[51] [53]
[57] [59], 20 kb/s
[59], 40 kb/s [59], 250 kb/s
[60], 250 kb/s [60], 1 Mb/s
[60], 2 Mb/s Pareto
Fig. 6. Wake-up delay of low-power receivers [16, 19, 22–24, 28–30, 33–35, 37, 39–42, 45–47, 50, 51, 53, 57] with a power consumption below 200 µW together
with duty-cycled transceivers Atmel AT86RF212 [59] and Nordic Semiconductor nRF51822 [60]; Pareto front included.
header with address information. Because of the different
protocols this leads to a different quantity of bits; 144 bits for
IEEE802.15.4 and 80 bits for Bluetooth LE. Hence, the packet
length and therefore the minimum ON-time T
on
is different for
each protocol.
TABLE II
CHARACTERISTICS FOR COMMERCIALLY AVAILABLE TRANSCEIVERS
data rate sensitivity P
on
P
off
AT86RF212 20 kb/s −110 dBm 30.36 mW 0.66 µW
40 kb/s −108 dBm 30.36 mW 0.66 µW
250 kb/s −101 dBm 30.36 mW 0.66 µW
nRF51822 250 kb/s −96 dBm 41.58 mW 1.98 µW
1 Mb/s −91 dBm 42.90 mW 1.98 µW
2 Mb/s −85 dBm 44.22 mW 1.98 µW
In Figure 6 the power consumption of the commercially
available transceivers is depicted together with wake-up re-
ceivers with a power consumption below 200 µW. The delay
in the case of WURs is equal to the time it takes them to send
a wake-up message. For designs [16, 22, 28–30, 34, 35, 37, 50]
that use spreading techniques with fixed spreading factors, the
amount of bits to send is predefined. For other designs, we
assume that a wake-up message consists of 32 bits with the
delay being directly proportional to their data rates.
As can be seen, all WUR concepts perform better than the
commercially available transceivers regarding delay and power
consumption. All of the concepts fulfill the delay requirements
given in Table I. Considering the sensitivity requirements as
well, only a subset remains. For the aeronautical case only
three concepts [23, 30, 51] fulfill the requirements, for the
industrial only one [51]. A duty-cycled nRF51822 with a data
rate of one or two Mb/s also meets the industrial requirements,
but only with a sensitivity worse than the concept in [51].
For an application with a delay restriction of 1 s, a duty-
cycled transceiver is an option. The mean power consumption
is in the order of 10 µW to 100 µW with a sensitivity of
−90 dBm to −110 dBm. This increase in sensitivity can
improve the reliability of the communication system which
outweighs the additional effort for the more complex commu-
nication protocol.
V. USING WAKE-UP RECEIVERS
If appropriate, the most promising application for low-power
receivers is to replace a “normal” receiver. If used for all
communication purposes, the low power design can yield the
most energy savings. However, as outlined in Section III-B,
the low-power receivers do not meet all requirements for all
applications. Another operational area is to use a low-power
receiver as a wake-up receiver. The low-power receiver will
not be used for the communication itself, but for initiating the
communication. Since the main transceiver does not have to
be periodically duty-cycled, it can be kept turned off as long
as no communication is required; only on demand will it be
turned on.
This behavior can be seen in Figure 7. In the first case, a
duty-cycled receiver is used. Once a communication demand
arises, the transmitter wants to start communicating and re-
peatedly sends the data packet. This repetition must continue
for the length of the duty cycle period to assure the meeting
with the ON phase of the duty-cycled receiver. In the second

A SURVEY OF LOW-POWER TRANSCEIVERS AND THEIR APPLICATIONS 8
ON ONreceiver
transmitter
unsuccsessful
transmission
succsessful
transmission
OFF
unsuccsessful
transmission
unsuccsessful
transmission
demand for communication
unsuccsessful
transmission
(a) duty-cycled receiver
receiver
WUR always ON
OFF
wake-up
transmitter
data
transmission
demand for communication
WUR
message
OFFON
(b) wake-up receiver
Fig. 7. Different communication approaches: (a) when using a duty-cycled
transceiver, and (b) when the communication is initiated with a WUR message
case, instead of sending the data packet directly, first a wake-up
message is transmitted. This message indicates the receiving
node that a data packet will follow and therefore it will turn
on its receiver. In this case, using a wake-up receiver will not
only decrease the idle listening time, but also shorten the mean
communication delay.
This is beneficial in a typical aeronautic application: on
ground, the status of simple switches has to be evaluated.
To accomplish this the monitored switch can be connected
to a sensor board, which currently is using a duty-cycled
transceiver. With this system, the status of one switch can be
polled within one second while only consuming < 100 µW on
average. Using a wake-up receiver instead, the communication
delay could be decreased by approximately one magnitude
while keeping the same power consumption. This increases
the responsiveness of the system immensely; it is possible to
inquire the status of several switches in the same time as only
one with a duty-cycled transceiver.
Polling devices is not the best solution for a large number
of devices. In [61] a more sophisticated protocol is presented,
where acknowledged wake-up messages are used to initiate,
for example, a TDMA protocol. With that, the time to inquire
the status of a large amount of sensors can be reduced, roughly,
by half. A similar approach is pursued in [62], where many
temperature values have to be monitored. To reduce the power
consumption, sensor nodes measuring similar readings are
clustered together. Only one of them is representing the cluster
and is transmitting the actual reading. Wake-up receivers are
used to establish the clusters in an energy efficient way and
to inform about changes.
VI. FUTURE RESEARCH AND CONCLUSION
The development over the last 10 years showed a clear
improvement of the performance of low-power receivers.
The power consumption dropped from 1 mW to almost only
100 nW, hence, a factor of 10000. Still there are no designs
available which fulfill the combined requirements for energy
consumption, sensitivity, and data rate for the aeronautical and
for the WBAN applications. If the performance improvement
continues to proceed, concepts for all application areas should
be available soon.
Currently there are few applications which depend on the
usage of a low-power receiver / wake-up receiver. Many ap-
plications could clearly benefit from using a wake-up receiver;
either because of a reduced power consumption or because of
a smaller communication delay. Some applications will only
be enabled when using a low-power receiver. With the high
potential for reducing the energy consumption, protocols that
are dependent on wake-up receivers are expected to arise.
Depending on specific application requirements, it is already
possible to replace a “normal” receiver with a low-power
receiver. If the low-power receiver characteristics do not yet
meet the requirements for the applications, they can be used
as wake-up receivers, which, by keeping similar power con-
sumption values, drastically reduces the communication delay
in comparison with duty-cycled systems.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The authors would like to acknowledge the funding by the
German Federal Ministry of Education and Research project
“AETERNITAS”.
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Johannes Blanckenstein works on communication
protocols in the general field of wireless sensor
networks and especially on protocols and applica-
tions for low-power wake-up receivers. He writes
his doctoral thesis at University Paderborn in the
computer networks group of Holger Karl. At the
same time he works at Airbus Group Innovations
in the field of WSN applications for aeronautics.
Jirka Klaue is a researcher at Airbus Group In-
novations in the field of wireless communications.
He received his diploma in computer science from
the Technical University of Berlin in 1999. Af-
terwards he worked on wireless video transmis-
sion at the Telecommunication Networks Group and
DResearch. He is co-founder of a software company
for web-based database applications. At Airbus he
participated in research projects founded by the EU,
BMBF, BMWi and Airbus. Currently he works on
reliable and time-critical wireless sensor networks.
Holger Karl is a Full Professor of Computer Sci-
ence at the University of Paderborn, Germany. He
is head of the research group Computer Networks,
which concentrates on architectures and protocols
for Internet, mobile and wireless networking. Holger
Karl received his MS and Ph.D degrees in 1996 and
1999, respectively. Later he continued his research
at the Technical University of Berlin before joining
the University of Paderborn in 2004. He is coauthor
of Protocols and Architectures for Wireless Sensor
Networks (Wiley). He has participated in various
roles in a number of different research projects founded by the European
commission, BMBF, DFG, and industry. His current research interests are
architectural questions for future mobile communication systems and the
future Internet, information-centric networking, cross-layer optimization, and
wireless sensor networks.