Wireless, remotely powered telemetry in 0.25 μm CMOS

This new architecture for wireless power and data telemetry recovers power and system clock from a weak incident RF signal. An efficient RF-DC converter rectifies and multiplies the received signal, generating a practical DC voltage, far higher than the incident RF signal amplitude, increasing the range between the base station and the transponder. An injection locked LC oscillator recovers the system clock from the incident signal. Super-harmonic or sub-harmonic locking facilitates the separation of the incident and telemetry frequency without the need for a PLL. Experimental data from a 900 MHz transponder and a remotely powered 2.3 GHz wireless temperature sensor are presented. Both prototypes, implemented in 0.25 μm CMOS, occupy less that 1 mm².