A New CMOS Analog Front End for RFID Tags

• Published in: IEEE transactions on industrial electronics (1982) 2009-07, Vol.56 (7), p.2299-2307
• Main Authors: Hwang, Y.-S., Lin, H.-C.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Circuits; CMOS; CMOS analog integrated circuits; CMOS technology; Demodulation; Demodulators; Detectors; Electric potential; Frequency shift keying; Frequency-shift keying (FSK) demodulator; Inverters; Multiplexing; Radio frequency; radio-frequency identification (RFID); Radiofrequency identification; rectifier; Rectifiers; regulator; Regulators; RFID tags; Studies; Tags; Voltage; voltage multiplier
• ISSN: 0278-0046; 1557-9948
• DOI: 10.1109/TIE.2008.2011348

This paper presents a new CMOS integrated analog front-end circuit for 13.56-MHz radio-frequency identification tags. The proposed analog front end consists of a novel CMOS rectified voltage multiplier, a voltage regulator, and a new frequency-shift keying (FSK) demodulator. The proposed single-stage rectifier employing only a PMOS/NMOS pass transistor, an inverter, and one capacitor gets minimal active area and enhances the power conversion efficiency. Moreover, a new technique is used in the proposed FSK demodulator, which includes the data recovery circuit, the multiplexer, the shift register, the phase frequency detector, and the charge-pump circuit. The analog front end has been fabricated in a CMOS 0.35-mum 2P4M technology. The demodulator circuit supports a data rate of 10 kb/s to 1 Mb/s. The power consumption is as low as 0.96 mW, and the chip area without pads is only 0.74 mm times 0.43 mm. Experimental results show that the proposed analog front end works well and confirms the theoretical analysis.