Design of highly efficient charge pump for energy harvesting RFID applications

Abstract

This paper proposes an improved charge pump circuit for low voltage RFID applications. The architecture of charge transfer switch based dynamic charge pump has been modified to provide higher output voltage than existing one. This has been achieved by replacing the diode with a charge transfer block at the last stage of the dynamic CTS charge pump. The modified charge pump eliminates the threshold voltage loss and the effects of leakage currents. A 10-stage charge pump circuit with each pumping capacitance of 1pF is designed and simulated with an input voltage of 1V and clock frequency of 500MHz. The proposed charge-pump circuit is designed and simulated by Cadence virtuoso with UMC 0.18-μm CMOS technology parameters.