A high-resolution UWB IR superregenerative receiver front end with an SRD quench shaper

Abstract

We present a simple receiver front end that makes use of the baseband superregeneration principle to detect ultrawideband (UWB) impulse radio signals. The UWB antenna is directly connected to the core circuit consisting of a resistor-capacitor (RC) network coupled to a negative resistance that varies under the control of an external quench generator. Due to a step-recovery-diode quench shaper, 50-ps time-domain sensitivity windows are generated that filter the received pulses and reject noise and interference. The circuit achieves high gain, exhibits automatic gain control, and directly demodulates binary phase modulations.