A Single-Chip CMOS UHF RFID Reader Transceiver for Chinese Mobile Applications

• Published in: IEEE journal of solid-state circuits 2010-07, Vol.45 (7), p.1316-1329
• Main Authors: Ye, Le, Liao, Huailin, Song, Fei, Chen, Jiang, Li, Chen, Zhao, Jinshu, Liu, Ruiqiang, Wang, Chuan, Shi, Congyin, Liu, Junhua, Huang, Ru, Wang, Yangyuan
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: 1f noise; Cancellation; Chinese RFID reader; Circuits; CMOS; CMOS transceiver; Cutoff frequency; DCOC; IEC standards; ISO standards; mobile RFID reader; Noise; Power generation; Protocols; Radio frequency; Radio frequency identification; Radiofrequency identification; reader; Readers; RFID; self-jammer; transceiver; Transceivers; transmitter leakage; UHF; UHF RFID reader
• ISSN: 0018-9200; 1558-173X
• DOI: 10.1109/JSSC.2010.2049459

UHF RFID reader transceiver for Chinese local standard (840-845 MHz and 920-925 MHz), in concord with the protocols of EPC Class-1 Gen-2 and ISO/IEC 18000-6C, is presented. A highly linear RF front-end with low flicker noise, an on-chip self-jammer cancellation (SC) circuit with fast time-varying cut-off frequency and a DC-offset cancellation (DCOC) circuit are proposed to deal with the large self-jammer in the receiver. In the presence of 22 dBm PA output power, the receiver achieves a sensitivity of -79 dBm including the 15 dB loss of the directional coupler. A CMOS class-AB PA is integrated in the transmitter, with 22 dBm output power and 35% PAE. The spectrum mask achieves ACPR 1 of -45 dBc and ACPR 2 of -60 dBc . A sigma-delta fractional-N PLL with a single LC VCO is also implemented for good phase noise (-126 dBc/Hz @ 1 MHz offset) and high frequency resolution within 1 kHz. This single-chip is fabricated in a 0.18 standard CMOS process. It occupies a silicon area of 13.5 mm 2 and dissipates 203 mW from a 1.8 V supply voltage when transmitting 7.5 dBm output power.