Fully integrated ultra-low-power passive UHF RFID transponder IC

This paper presents a low power UHF RFID tag IC with 512 bit Non volatile memory (NVM). The tag IC has -17 dBm minimum read operation power sensitivity. Analog function blocks, a digital baseband, and a memory system operate with 0.8 V ~ 2.0 V supply voltage range without voltage regulator. Only current-starved ring oscillator operates 0.6 V with calibration. Most of analog blocks adopted low power subthreshold operating design. The memory system is chosen 512-bit Fowler-Nordheim tunneling NVM. Digital baseband is designed to clock gating, clock recovery, balanced power distribution, and adaptive power consumption methodology. The tag IC is implemented in the 0.18-μm CMOS technology. The overall power consumption of designed IC is only 2.64 μW at 0.8 V supply voltage. The chip size is 0.65 mm × 0.65 mm.