Detecting and demodulating a VCO which turns on and off constantly

[JustNobody]

All,

So I am working on a design project for a research group and their device requires an ultra-low power consumption. Previously, the design engineer before me has TRIED to resolve the issue as follows:

He has used a MAX2750 chip which has a "shutdown mode". He then fed the "shutdown enable" switch with a pulse with modulator. This way, the VCO is turned on and off constantly (the duty cycle is determined by the duty cycle of the pwm). The data is fed into the "tune" pin, but the data is only modulated when the "shutdown mode" is disabled.

My problem is as follows: How do I build a detector which can detect a signal that is constantly turning on and off. Is there any articles about this that someone can refer me to? Or maybe explain how I can design a demodulator that can find a signal like this?

Thanks,

 

[berkeman]

All,

So I am working on a design project for a research group and their device requires an ultra-low power consumption. Previously, the design engineer before me has TRIED to resolve the issue as follows:

He has used a MAX2750 chip which has a "shutdown mode". He then fed the "shutdown enable" switch with a pulse with modulator. This way, the VCO is turned on and off constantly (the duty cycle is determined by the duty cycle of the pwm). The data is fed into the "tune" pin, but the data is only modulated when the "shutdown mode" is disabled.

My problem is as follows: How do I build a detector which can detect a signal that is constantly turning on and off. Is there any articles about this that someone can refer me to? Or maybe explain how I can design a demodulator that can find a signal like this?

Thanks,

So this VCO is used for transmitting on different WiFi channels, right? The simplest way to receive would be to have separate receivers running on each of the available channels at the same time. A harder way would be to use a wideband receiver that can phase lock to the received signal in some reasonable amount of time. If the transmissions are short, though, you will probably need to use the separate receiver approach.