A mm-Wave Power-Harvesting RFID Tag in 90 nm CMOS

✍ Scribed by Pellerano, S.; Alvarado, J.; Palaskas, Y.

• Book ID: 111968130
• Publisher: IEEE
• Year: 2010
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 861 KB
• Volume: 45
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0018-9200
• DOI: 10.1109/jssc.2010.2049916

✦ Synopsis

A mm-wave power-harvesting RFID tag is implemented in 90 nm CMOS. Operation at mm-wave reduces antenna size and could allow antenna integration on-chip. This, together with power harvesting that can be used in lieu of a battery, can result in a pinless, CMOS-only tag with no package and no off-chip components whatsoever. The tag harvests energy from the incoming mm-wave continuous wave (CW) signal transmitted by the reader and then uses a 60 GHz free-running oscillator to transmit back pulse-width modulated bursts. An in-depth treatment of the voltage multiplier and associated matching network and implications on tag range are presented. With 2 dBm mm-wave input power, the tag achieves a rate of 5 kb/s. The RFIC size is 1 3 0 95 mm 2 including pads.