RF and Low Power Analog Design for RFID

A passive RFID tag consists of an antenna and IC operating without a battery. The DC power required to operate the IC is generated by converting the incoming RF field to a DC supply using a rectifier. The minimum DC power available from the rectifier is on the order of a few micro-watts, and this is the power available to operate the tag, comprised of various sub-systems. Each sub-system is typically allocated only hundreds of nano-watts of DC power to operate. The basic functional analog sub-systems of the IC include rectifier, RF and DC power management, data receiver, backscatter modulator, non-volatile memory controller, and additional supporting sub-circuits. This paper addresses several aspects of the design of RF and Analog Front End circuits for RFID.