A low power and low ripple CMOS high voltage generator for RFID transponder EEPROM.

Labonnah Farzana Rahman,Lariyah Mohd Sidek,Lubna Alam,Mamun Bin Ibne Reaz,Mohammad Marufuzzaman

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0225408

Labonnah Farzana Rahman, Lariyah Mohd Sidek + Show 3 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0225408

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Abstract

A high-voltage generator (HVG) is an essential part of a radio frequency identification electrically erasable programmable read-only memory (RFID–EEPROM). An HVG circuit is used to generate a regulated output voltage that is higher than the power supply voltage. However, the performance of the HVG is affected owing to the high-power dissipation, high-ripple voltage and low-pumping efficiency. Therefore, a regulator circuit consists of a voltage divider, comparator and a voltage reference, which are respectively required to reduce the ripple voltage, increase pumping efficiency and decrease the power dissipation of the HVG. Conversely, a clock driving circuit consists of the current-starved ring oscillator (CSRO), and the non- overlapping clock generator is required to drive the clock signals of the HVG circuit. In this study, the Mentor Graphics EldoSpice software package is used to design and simulate the HVG circuitry. The results showed that the designed CSRO dissipated only 4.9 μW at 10.2 MHz and that the phase noise was only -119.38 dBc/Hz at 1 MHz. Moreover, the proposed charge pump circuit was able to generate a maximum VPP of 13.53 V and it dissipated a power of only 31.01 μW for an input voltage VDD of 1.8 V. After integrating all the HVG modules, the results showed that the regulated HVG circuit was also able to generate a higher VPP of 14.59 V, while the total power dissipated was only 0.12 mW with a chip area of 0.044 mm2. Moreover, the HVG circuit produced a pumping efficiency of 90% and reduced the ripple voltage to <4 mV. Therefore, the integration of all the proposed modules in HVG ensured low-ripple programming voltages, higher pumping efficiency, and EEPROMs with lower power dissipation, and can be extensively used in low-power applications, such as in non-volatile memory, radiofrequency identification transponders, on-chip direct current DC-DC converters.

Highlights

A radiofrequency identification (RFID) transponder is a chip or a small circuit board coupled to an antenna [1]
After integrating all the modules current-starved ring oscillator (CSRO), NOC_Gen, charge pump (CP), and the voltage regulator circuit, a pre-layout simulation result is obtained, as shown in Fig 8, whereby a high VPP of 14.59 V is generated from the proposed high-voltage generator (HVG) for a power supply voltage of 1.8 V
As the aim of this research was to reduce the power dissipation and the ripple voltage, so it is obvious from Table 1 that the proposed HVG achieved the desired results that were compatible with the RFID transponder erasable programmable read-only memory (EEPROM)

Summary

Introduction

A radiofrequency identification (RFID) transponder is a chip or a small circuit board coupled to an antenna [1]. A typical RFID chip mainly contains three blocks: an analog block, logic and memory. To store data in the readerless RFID transponder, a small amount of nonvolatile memory (NVM) should be embedded [2]. The single-ended memory cell architecture has a large area/bit and consumes considerable power as each bit cell contains its own high-voltage switch [7,8]. With the features of high-energy efficiency, small area, low-power consumption and regulated voltage generation, the HVG is a key module in an EEPROM. It is usually applied to the EEPROM in RFID transponders, direct current DC-DC converters and power management chips, to write or to erase floating-gate devices [10,11,12,13]

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