A Novel Low-Power Digital Baseband Controller for Passive UHF RFID Tag

A novel low-power digital baseband controller for Ultra High Frequency (UHF) passive Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tag is presented in this paper. By analyzing the system design, it is carefully divided into several modules, and it also adopts some advanced low power techniques for system design, based on Electronic Product Code (EPC) Class-1 Generation-2 (C1G2) UHF RFID protocol. The Pulse-interval encoding (PIE) decoder uses a novel double-edge-triggered counter to reduce a half of clock working frequency, then the power dissipation of the system can be reduced evidently by selecting the low-power CMOS cell and dividing the system clock to get the scatter backscatter link frequency (BLF). The chip was fabricated in Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC) 0.18µm standard CMOS process, and the final power consumption is 13.1µW. Test results show that it can support the basic command for the tag selection, inventory and the access.