1

Wireless Sensor Network in Reusable Vehicle

Rocket and Low-power 20-30 GHz Amplifier
MMIC
Ryo Takamori1, Midori Kawasaki1, Harunobu Seita2, Kentaro Nishimori3, Naoki Honma4,

Kenjiro Nishikawa1, 5, Yusuke Maru5, and Sigeo Kawasaki5

1
Kagoshima University, 2UM-Service LTD., 3Niigata University, 4Iwate University, 5Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency

Abstract— This paper proposes a wireless sensor network

system in a rocket and describes the architecture of sensor tags.
The proposed health monitoring system based on the wireless
sensor network employs MIMO communication systems,
dual-band; 5GHz for downlink and 24GHz for uplink, and dual
power sources; vibration and electromagnetic. The paper also
demonstrates a GaAs pHEMT 20-30 GHz band low-power
consumption amplifier MMIC for the sensor system. At 1V supply
voltage, the amplifier achieves a gain of 11.4dB at 24.5GHz. The
power consumption and the output 1-dB compression point are
6.16mW and -0.8dBm, respectively. The MMIC achieves the
highest performances of reported 24-GHz amplifier ICs.

Index Terms—reusable rocket, health monitoring system, RVT,

wireless sensor network, wireless power transmission, IC sensor (a) (b)
tag, MIMO, amplifier, GaAs pHEMT, Fig.1 Wireless sensor network inside RVT
(a) Photograph of RVT, (b) Image of the health monitoring
system in a rocket
I. INTRODUCTION

Reusable rockets have been demanded to reduce launch cost

and preparing time. A health monitoring system of the
rockets is a key technology to realize the reusable rockets with
high–level safety. In the rockets the wireless sensor network
approach is the best way to construct the health monitoring
system due to light weight. The wireless health monitoring
systems have been already proposed and developed on modern
aircrafts. However, there have been a few trials in the rocket or
satellite fields.
Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has developed
the Reusable Vehicle Testing (RVT) rockets[1] shown in Fig.
1. The RVT employs a liquid hydrogen engine, so it requires
hydrogen sensors to avoid hydrogen leakage from tanks or
pipes. Fig.2 Data transmission rate with MIMO communication
This paper proposes a new wireless health monitoring system inside RVT
system used in the RVT and the first prototype system applies
to the wireless sensor network for monitoring a liquid hydrogen
leakage. The paper also demonstrates a low-power II. WIRELESS HEALTH MONITORING SYSTEM
consumption and high linearity amplifier MMIC for the above Fig.1 shows the photograph and the wireless sensor network
wireless sensor system. image of the RVT developed by JAXA. The wireless sensor
The paper organizes as follows. In section II, the radio wave network is used for health monitoring of various components,
propagation inside the RVT is clarified and the new wireless such as engine, tanks, etc. To implement a health monitoring
sensor network system is proposed. Section III demonstrates system in the three-meter-high prototype rocket, tiny sensor IC
the low-power consumption amplifier MMIC. Conclusion tags are required and they are expected to work independently
follows in Section IV.

978-1-4673-5010-5/13/$31.00 ©2013 IEEE 96


Fig.3 System chart of proposed wireless sensor network
for a long time without large batteries. The wireless sensor
network in the RVT consists of a few base stations and a lot of
sensor tags.
Fig. 2 shows the measured transmission rate inside the RVT,
which employs various equipment covered with a CFRP
cowling, by using 2 x 2 MIMO wireless communication system
at 2.4 GHz band. The transmitter (TX) and receiver (RX) are
located at the top area and around the bottom area in the RVT,
respectively. The transmission rates versus TX power
characteristics are plotted in Fig. 2. X-axis also exhibits the
corresponding RX receiving power. The measured results
indicate that the propagation loss is about 50 dB, which value is
the same as the free space loss of 3-m distance. 20 Mbps data
rate is achieved when RX receiving power is better than -90
dBm. This evaluation results that the MIMO communication
system is effective to realize the wireless network inside the
RVT. In addition, the MIMO system will provide power and
data transmission simultaneously.
Fig.3 shows the conceptual system chart of the proposed
wireless sensor network system. It is divided into three main
divisions: uplink, downlink and the inside of the sensor tag.
To avoid use of large battery in the tag, a wireless power
transmission technology (WPT) and vibration energy
generation technology[2] are employed as power sources. In
addition, a tiny battery or a capacitor is also installed to store
the energy from the power sources in the tag. The double
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power-source system effectively provides the energy to operate
the wireless health monitoring system.
Uplink and downlink frequencies are 24.5 GHz and 5 GHz,
respectively. These frequencies are used to both reduce the
sensor tag size and realize the high uplink data rate. The low
frequency of the downlink simultaneously offers the wireless
power transmission. In downlink, base stations transmit the
commands and electrical power for each sensor tag. In uplink
the sensor tags send the information obtained from the sensors
to the base stations. The expected transfer rate is 100 kbps in
downlink and 20Mbps in uplink. The base stations provide
20-dBm transmission power with a 10-dBi gain antenna. 56-dB
propagation loss is estimated on around 3-m transmission
distance at 5 GHz. From the above information, the received
power is calculated as follows:
Received power = 20dBm + 10dBi -56dB = -26dBm
Thus, the received power in the sensor tags is -26dBm. On the
other hand, the minimum received power to realize the 20 Mbps
transmission rate in the base stations is -90dBm. Considering
the antenna gain of the RX is 10dBi and 70dB propagation loss
at 24.5GHz, the transmission power required for the sensor tags
is calculated as follows:
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Transmission power -70dB + 10dBi = -90dBm

Transmission power = -30dBm

In addition, transmission power should be considered a 10dB

margin, resulting in around -20dBm of a transmission power at
the sensor tag.
In sensor tag design, the key issues are how to reduce the
power consumption of the tag and how to harvest the energy for
the data transmission. On the early development phase, the
sensor tags send information every three minutes periodically.
This time sequence effectively stores the energy to the battery
and detected data will be transmitted after filling of the energy.
Estimated total power consumption in the wireless sensor tag is
55mW; the transmitter consumes 10mW and the receiver is
20mW. These values correspond from the settle time to the
final launch of the rocket. At the engineering stage, electric
power of the sensor tags will be reduced drastically. The
receiver of sensor tag is composed by a LNA, a mixer, an IF Fig.4 Characteristic of 0.1μm GaAspHEMT at VG=0V
amplifier and a demodulator. Modulated signal at 5GHz makes
a low-frequency conversion and demodulation to prepare the
signal to the analog-digital converter. The transmitter consists
of a low power-consumption and high-linearity amplifier, a
mixer and a modulator. Output data of the digital-analog
converters is modulated to QPSK and converted to 24 GHz.
Then this signal is radiated from the antenna on the tag.

III. 20-30 -GHZ-BAND LOW-POWER CONSUMPTION

AMPLIFIER
Circuit design
A transmitting amplifier in the tag has to achieve both low
power consumption and high linearity to simplify a MIMO
control system. To realize the requirements, the commercially
available 0.1-μm GaAs pHEMT process of United Monolithic
Semiconductor[3] was used. The typical fT and fmax at VD=2.5V
are 150 GHz and over 250 GHz, respectively. The maximum
transconductance is 725mS/mm. Fig.4 shows the MSG/MAG
performances of the 2 x 20 μm gate-width GaAs pHEMT
device used on amplifier MMIC. The corresponding I-V
characteristics are also plotted in Fig. 4. The maximum gain
values at drain voltages from 1.0 V to 2.5 V are almost the same,
while the drain currents are drastically reduced when the drain
bias decreases. These characteristics offer acceptable
performances, low power consumption and linearity, in the
proposed wireless sensor network system.
Fig.5 shows an equivalent circuit of a developed 20-30 GHz
band low-power consumption two-stage amplifier. An
operation voltage of 1 V was selected to realize the low power
dissipation of the amplifier. The circuit employs
open/short-stubs in the input and output matching circuits to
achieve broadband operation, respectively.
Measured result
Fig.6 shows a photograph of a fabricated 20-30 GHz band
low-power consumption amplifier MMIC. The chip size is 3.0
mm x 1.5 mm. Fig.7 shows the measured frequency responses
of the amplifier at a supply voltage of VD=1V. S21 exceeds
10.2dB at a frequency range between 20GHz and 30GHz. At
24.5 GHz, the corresponding return losses, S11 and S22, are

Fig.5 Equivalent circuit of 20-30 GHz-band Low-Power
Consumption Amplifier

Fig.6 Photograph of 20-30 GHz-band Low-Power
Consumption Amplifier
-6.4dB and -9.8dB, respectively. While S21 achieves 11.4dB.
The total power consumption is 6.16mW. The output power
and the corresponding phase characteristic at 24.5GHz are
plotted in Fig.7. The output 1-dB compression point (OP1dB) is
-0.8dBm and its value satisfies the -20dBm transmission output
power required on the proposed sensor network system. The
phase shifting varies less than 1.5 degree at an input power of
-12dBm on simulation. The linearly performance of the
amplifier promises the high-data rate QPSK modulation
transmission system. However, power consumption should be
improved in future.
Fig.9 compares the performances of the reported
24-GHz-band amplifier MMICs[4]-[11]. Y-axis is the OP1dB
and X-axis is the gain per power consumption. These works are
plotted three points (Star marks); VD=1V, 1.5V, 2V. In all
supply voltages, the performances of the demonstrated

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Fig.7 Measured S-parameter
Fig.8 Input-output characteristics
Fig.9 Comparison with published works
amplifier MMIC achieve the same or better characteristics
compared with the published works.
IV. CONCLUSION
This paper proposes a wireless sensor network for health
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monitoring a rocket by designing the system of the wireless
sensor network and by proposing the composition of the IC
tags. In addition, we demonstrated a low power consumption
amplifier MMIC operating at 20-30 GHz-bands. The prototype
MMIC achieves a gain of 11.4dB and an output 1-dB
compression point of -0.8 dBm with a power consumption of
only 6.16mW.
Acknowledgement
This study is carried out as a part of “R&D promotion
scheme funding international joint research” promoted by
NICT (National Institute of Information and Communications
Technology).
The authors would like to thank Mr. Eric Leclerc and his
team (United Monolithic Semiconductor SAS), Mr. Hideaki
Amano (US-Services LTD.) and Dr. Keren Lee (NICT) for
their supports.
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