A 90nm CMOS UHF/UWB asymmetric transceiver for RFID readers

This paper presents an integrated asymmetric transceiver in 90nm CMOS technology for RFID reader. The proposed reader uses UHF transmitter to power up and inventory the tags. In the reverse link, a non-coherent Ultra-wide Band (UWB) receiver is deployed for data reception with high throughput and ranging capability. The transmitter delivers 160 kb/s ASK modulated data by an integrated modulator and a Digital Controlled Oscillator (DCO) in UHF band with 11% tuning range. The DCO consume 6 mW with 0.12 mm² area. On the other side, adopting two integration channels, the 3-5 GHz energy detection receiver supports maximum 33 Mb/s data rate both in OOK and PPM modulations. The receiver front-end provides 59 dB voltage gain and 8.5 dB noise figure (NF). Measurement results shows that the receiver achieves an input sensitivity of -79 dBm at 10 Mb/s, with power consumption of 15.5 mW.