A Robust BLE-compatible Wake-up Receiver for Ingestible Device with In-vivo Evaluation

In the evolving field of biomedical engineering, ingestible devices have emerged as pivotal tools for healthcare monitoring within the human gastrointestinal (GI) tract. This paper addresses challenges in communication, emphasizing the selection of the 2.4 GHz band and proposing a Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE)-compatible wake-up receiver (WuRx) operating at 2.48 GHz that validates with the in-vivo test. An LNA-first receiver is used to counter signal loss within the GI tract and achieves -81 dBm of sensitivity. The proposed design incorporates a low-power single clock chain with a Film Bulk Acoustic Resonator (FBAR) and a duty cycling scheme for reducing power consumption. The average power with 1% duty cycling ratio is 0.11 µW. This work introduces the first BLE-compatible WuRx for low power ingestible devices, demonstrating the potential for diverse medical applications.