A passive UHF RFID tag chip with a dual-resolution temperature sensor in a 0.18 μm standard CMOS process

Abstract

This paper presents a passive EPC Gen-2 UHF RFID tag chip with a dual-resolution temperature sensor. The chip tag integrates a temperature sensor, an RF/analog front-end circuit, an NVM memory and a digital baseband in a standard CMOS process. The sensor with a low power sigma—delta (ΣΔ) ADC is designed to operate in low and high resolution modes. It can not only achieve the target accuracy but also reduce the power consumption and the sensing time. A CMOS-only RF rectifier and a single-poly non-volatile memory (NVM) are designed to realize a low cost tag chip. The 192-bit-NVM tag chip with an area of 1 mm2 is implemented in a 0.18-μm standard CMOS process. The sensitivity of the tag is −10.7 dBm/−8.4 dBm when the sensor is disabled/enabled. It achieves a maximum reading/sensing distance of 4 m/3.1 m at 2 W EIRP. The inaccuracy of the sensor is −0.6 °C/0.5 °C (−1.0 °C/1.2 °C) in the operating range from 5 to 15 °C in high resolution mode (−30 to 50 °C in low resolution mode). The resolution of the sensor achieves 0.02 °C (0.18 °C) in high (low) resolution mode.