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Fei Chen

Biography

Enrollment Date: 2010

Graduation Date：2014

Degree：Ph.D.

Defense Date：2014.05.28

Advisors：Woogeun Rhee

Department：Institute of Microelectronics，Tsinghua University

Title of Dissertation/Thesis：Study on Low-Power Ultra-Wideband Transceiver for Wireless Binaural Hearing Aids

Abstract:
As the aging population in the world is growing rapidly, the market demand for hearing aid devices is huge. The miniaturized hearing aid devices equipped with wireless communication and binaural signal processing will play a dominant role in the future. Currently, the operating power of the wireless transceiver module is in the order of 10 mW, accounting for more than 70% of the power consumption of a typical hearing aid device. Therefore, reducing the power consumption of the RF transceiver is the key to reducing the overall power consumption of the hearing aid. The goal of this research is to lower the power consumption of the wireless transceiver from 10 mW to 1 mW in order to meet the needs of the satisfied operating hours for the small-sized, battery-powered bilateral hearing aids and other mobile terminals. This will mitigate the inconvenience caused by the frequent battery replacement, and facilitate the binaural processing with more complex algorithm. In this dissertaion, based on the investigation of the key technologies of binaural hearing aids and low-power wireless transceivers, we proposed two ultra-wideband transceiver architectures to reduce the power consumption with sufficient data rate. In the first architecture, an FM-UWB transceiver with 8-FSK subcarrier modulation is implemented to increase data rate. It achieves a power consumption of 5 mW at 750 kb/s data rate. The prototype was fabricated in 65 nm CMOS technology. The transmitter uses a fast-settled PLL for subcarrier modulation, and a ring VCO with gated FLL for wideband FM modulation. The receiver utilizes a wideband low-noise amplifier and dual BPFs to achieve robust FM demodulation with high linearity. In the second architecture, a low-power 2-FSK Chirp UWB technique is proposed. It combines advantages from existing IR-UWB and FM-UWB, but inhibit their inherent shortcomings. The transmitter outputs chirp pulses of 10% duty cycle and 500 MHz bandwidth at 8 GHz. The receiver uses non-coherent RF demodulation based on frequency detection and 15% duty-cycled operation for the frontend to minimize the power consumption. The backend uses oversampling method for the clock and data recovery to achieve low-latency and low-power bit synchronization. The prototype was fabricated in 65 nm CMOS process. The transceiver consumes a peak power of 7.5 mW, but the average power is only 1 mW, reaching an energy efficiency of 1 nJ/bit. Finally, the thesis presents a new structure of binaural hearing aids based on portable wireless terminal. It uses the Chirp-UWB as wireless solution, and it moves the digital signal processing from the ear side to the portable terminal such as the smartphone. This method reduces the power consumption of the hearing aids at the ear side, and improves the calculation capability and flexibility of digital signal processing. Meanwhile, this structure relaxes the sensitivity requirement of the wireless receiver.

Publications

Papers：：

[1] Zhuoyi Sun,Yingdan Li,Hanjun Jiang,Fei Chen,Xiang Xie,Zhihua Wang, A Supervised Speech Enhancement Method for Smartphone-Based Binaural Hearing Aids, IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Circuits and Systems, Vol.14, No.5, pp. 951 - 960, 2020.

[2] Yingdan Li,Fei Chen,Zhuoyi Sun,Junyu Ji,Wen Jia,Zhihua Wang, A Smart Binaural Hearing Aid Architecture Leveraging a Smartphone APP With Deep-Learning Speech Enhancement, IEEE Access, Vol.8, pp. 56798 - 56810, 2020.

[3] Yingdan Li,Fei Chen,Zhuoyi Sun,Zhaoyang Weng,Xian Tang,Hanjun Jiang,Zhihua Wang, A Smart Binaural Hearing Aid Architecture Based on a Mobile Computing Platform, Electronics, Vol.8, No.7, pp. 811 - 828, 2020.

[4] Fei Chen,Shuai Wang,Juanjuan Li,Huajun Tan,Wen Jia,Zhihua Wang, Smartphone-Based Hearing Self-Assessment System Using Hearing Aids With Fast Audiometry Method, IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Circuits and Systems, Vol.13, No.1, pp. 170 - 179, 2019.

[5] Fei Chen,Woogeun Rhee,Zhihua Wang, A 5-mW 750-kb/s Noninvasive Transceiver for Around-the-Head Audio Applications, IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems II: Express Briefs, Vol.65, No.2, pp. 196 - 200, 2018.

[6] Zhuoyi Sun,Yingdan Li,Hanjun Jiang,Fei Chen,Zhihua Wang, A MVDR- MWF Combined Algorithm for Binaural Hearing Aid System, BioCAS 2018, pp. 1 - 4, 2018.

[7] Yingdan Li,Fei Chen,Zhuoyi Sun,Zhaoyang Weng,Xian Tang,Hanjun Jiang,Zhihua Wang, System architecture of a smart binaural hearing aid using a mobile computing platform, ASICON 2017, pp. 440 - 443, 2017.

[8] Wei Zhang,Yizhi Han,Fei Chen,Bo Zhou,Xican Chen,Woogeun Rhee,Zhihua Wang, A 3.5–4GHz FMCW radar transceiver design with phase-domain oversampled ranging by utilizing a 1-bit ΔΣ TDC, VLSI-DAT 2014, pp. 1 - 4, 2014.

[9] Yu Li,Fei Chen,Dang Liu,Xiaoyong Li,Yang Li,Yudong Zhang,Zhicheng Wang,Woogeun Rhee,Zhihua Wang, A 1.6Mb/s 3.75–4.25GHz chirp-UWB transceiver with enhanced spectral efficiency in 0.18μm CMOS, RFIT 2014, pp. 1 – 3, 2014.

[10] Fei Chen,Yu Li,Dang Liu,Woogeun Rhee,Jongjin Kim,Dongwook Kim,Zhihua Wang, A 1mW 1Mb/s 7.75-to-8.25GHz chirp-UWB transceiver with low peak-power transmission and fast synchronization capability, ISSCC 2014, pp. 162 - 163, 2014.

[11] Yu Li,Fei Chen,Woogeun Rhee,Zhihua Wang, A chirp-UWB transceiver with embedded bulk PPM for energy efficient data transmission, IEEE-IWS 2014, pp. 1 - 4, 2014.

[12] Fei Chen,Wei Zhang,Woogeun Rhee,Jongjin Kim,Dongwook Kim,Zhihua Wang, A 3.8-mW 3.5–4-GHz Regenerative FM-UWB Receiver With Enhanced Linearity by Utilizing a Wideband LNA and Dual Bandpass Filters, IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques, Vol.61, No.9, pp. 3350 - 3359, 2013.

[13] Wei Zhang,Xican Chen,Fei Chen,Woogeun Rhee,Zhihua Wang, A Phase-Domain Delta Sigma Ranging Method for FMCW Radar Receivers, IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems II-Express Briefs, Vol.60, No.9, pp. 537 - 541, 2013.

[14] Bo Zhou,Fei Chen,Woogeun Rhee,Zhihua Wang, A Reconfigurable FM-UWB Transceiver for Short-Range Wireless Communications, IEEE Microwave and Wireless Components Letters, Vol.23, No.7, pp. 371 - 373, 2013.

[15] Dang Liu,Fei Chen,Woogeun Rhee,Zhihua Wang, An FM-UWB transceiver with M-PSK subcarrier modulation and regenerative FM demodulation, MWSCAS 2013, pp. 936 – 939, 2013.

[16] Fei Chen,Yu Li,Deyuan Lin,Huiying Zhuo,Woogeun Rhee,Jongjin Kim,Dongwook Kim,Zhihua Wang, A 1.14mW 750kb/s FM-UWB transmitter with 8-FSK subcarrier modulation, CICC 2013, pp. 1 - 4, 2013.

[17] Fei Chen,Wei Zhang,Woogeun Rhee,Jongjin Kim,Dongwook Kim,Zhihua Wang, A 3.8mW, 3.5–4GHz regenerative FM-UWB receiver with enhanced linearity by utilizing a wideband LNA and dual bandpass filters, RFIT 2012, pp. 150 - 152, 2012.