An analog front-end circuit with dual-directional SCR ESD protection for UHF-band passive RFID tag

Author

Tsai, Ming-Hsien ; Hsu, Shawn S H ; Hsueh, Fu-Lung ; Jou, Chewn-Pu ; Song, Ming-Hsiang ; Tseng, Jen-Chou ; Chang, Tzu-Heng ; Nag, Dipankar

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. Eng., Nat. Tsing Hua Univ., Hsinchu, Taiwan

fYear

2011

fDate

12-14 April 2011

Firstpage

142

Lastpage

145

Abstract

In this study, we demonstrate an analog front-end (AFE) circuit with ESD protection for a passive RFID tag at UHF-band (860~960 MHz) in a 0.18-μm CMOS technology. A dual-directional silicon-controlled-rectifier (dual-SCR) structure is proposed for the ESD protection under the large-signal operation at the RFID input. With the well-designed dual-SCR, a large trigger voltage (V_T) of ~16.9 V is obtained. The parasitic capacitance of the ESD block is only ~34 fF, which has virtually no impact on the core circuits at the frequency of interest. The measured ESD levels achieve 3.0-kV human-body-mode (HBM) and 200-V machine-mode (MM), respectively. The RF-DC rectifier in the RFID circuit can generate a stable power supply output about 1.2 V when the RF input power exceeds -7.5 dBm.

Keywords

CMOS analogue integrated circuits; UHF integrated circuits; electrostatic discharge; radiofrequency identification; rectifiers; thyristors; CMOS technology; RF-DC rectifier; UHF-band passive RFID tag; analog front-end circuit; core circuits; dual-directional SCR ESD protection; dual-directional silicon-controlled-rectifier structure; frequency 860 MHz to 960 MHz; human-body-mode; machine-mode; parasitic capacitance; size 0.18 mum; trigger voltage; voltage 200 V; voltage 3.0 kV; Electrostatic discharge; Radio frequency; Radiofrequency identification; Rectifiers; Schottky diodes; Thyristors; Voltage measurement; CMOS; RFID; electrostatic discharge (ESD); silicon-controlled rectifier (SCR);

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

RFID (RFID), 2011 IEEE International Conference on

Conference_Location

Orlando, FL

Print_ISBN

978-1-4244-9607-5

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/RFID.2011.5764614

Filename

5764614