Soheil Radiom

A remote-powered RFID tag with 10Mb/s UWB uplink and −18.5dBm sensitivity UHF downlink in 0.18µm CMOS

Wireless sensing and positioning are new added functions, highly demanded, in future and emerging RFID technology [1]. The data rate of existing passive RFID tags is limited to a few hundreds of kb/s causing large latency. On the other hand, the position accuracy is not better than 70cm [2]. In an advanced design, a 3.4Mb/s data rate has been achieved in proximity operation [3]. Active tags with a narrowband radio link overcome these weaknesses, but, they are battery powered and more expensive.

Far-Field On-Chip Antennas Monolithically Integrated in a Wireless-Powered 5.8-GHz Downlink/UWB Uplink RFID Tag in 0.18-

This paper discusses two antennas monolithically integrated on-chip to be used respectively for wireless powering and UWB transmission of a tag designed and fabricated in 0.18-μm CMOS technology. A multiturn loop-dipole structure with inductive and resistive stubs is chosen for both antennas. Using these on-chip antennas, the chip employs asymmetric communication links: at downlink, the tag captures the required supply wirelessly from the received RF signal transmitted by a reader and, for the uplink, ultra-wideband impulse-radio (UWB-IR), in the 3.1-10.6-GHz band, is employed instead of backscattering to achieve extremely low power and a high data rate up to 1 Mb/s. At downlink with the on-chip power-scavenging antenna and power-management unit circuitry properly designed, 7.5-cm powering distance has been achieved, which is a huge improvement in terms of operation distance compared with other reported tags with on-chip antenna. Also, 7-cm operating distance is achieved with the implemented on-chip UWB antenna. The tag can be powered up at all the three ISM bands of 915 MHz and 2.45 GHz, with off-chip antennas, and 5.8 GHz with the integrated on-chip antenna. The tag receives its clock and the commands wirelessly through the modulated RF powering-up signal. Measurement results show that the tag can operate up to 1 Mb/s data rate with a minimum input power of -19.41 dBm at 915-MHz band, corresponding to 15.7 m of operation range with an off-chip 0-dB gain antenna. This is a great improvement compared with conventional passive RFIDs in term of data rate and operation distance. The power consumption of the chip is measured to be just 16.6 μW at the clock frequency of 10 MHz at 1.2-V supply. In addition, in this paper, for the first time, the radiation pattern of an on-chip antenna at such a frequency is measured. The measurement shows that the antenna has an almost omnidirectional radiation pattern so that the chips performance is less direction-dependent.

\mu{\hbox {m}}

The increase of mobile applications requires antennas ever smaller in form factor. In this paper, an effective method is presented for antenna size miniaturization of ultrawideband (UWB) monopole antennas with symmetric structure and perfect magnetic conductor (PMC) plane. Two small antennas are designed for pulsed UWB applications in the 3.1-10.6-GHz band with and without notch behavior in the band. The presented technique is applied to both antennas for an even further 50% area reduction. The performance of the miniaturized antennas is then compared with the main-size structures. Using both simulations and measurements the paper analyzes and demonstrates in detail the effectiveness of the presented technique in the time and frequency domain.

Standard CMOS

A fully integrated far-field powering system for RFID and implantable devices with monolithically fully integrated on-chip antenna in 0.18µm CMOS is presented. The chip receives power, clock and data wirelessly through RF signal at all the three ISM bands of 915 MHz, 2.45 GHz and 5.8 GHz. Measurements show a minimum input power of −19.41 dBm at 900MHz for chip operation, corresponding to 15.7 meter of operation range with an off-chip 0dB gain antenna. On the other hand, with its on-chip antenna at 5.8 GHz, the chip can be powered-up up to 7.5 cm distance. This is a huge improvement in terms of operation distance compared with other reported similar works with on-chip antenna as well as the off-chip antennas.

An Effective Technique for Symmetric Planar Monopole Antenna Miniaturization

Based on Hariks compact genetic algorithm, in this paper a real-coded type of compact genetic algorithm, RCGA, based on probability distribution function of each gene is developed. The algorithm is applied to design a new small-size tapered monopole ultra-wideband antenna as a practical utilization. The antenna is a modified PTMA which is able to improve the bandwidth using eleven degrees of freedom. The final optimized antenna design works from 3.1 to 11.7 GHz and has only 48% of the size compared to previous work.

Far-field RF powering system for RFID and implantable devices with monolithically integrated on-chip antenna

This letter presents a monolithically integrated on-chip antenna fabricated in 0.18 μm standard CMOS technology. As the antenna is used for power scavenging in a passive chip, it is designed to be matched with the rectifier circuit. The letter describes the important design considerations and the antenna characterization through measurements.

A Simple Real-Coded Compact Genetic Algorithm and its Application to Antenna Optimization

A modified small-size tapered monopole antenna is optimized for ultra wideband applications in co-design with the transceiver. Our optimization procedure aims at finding an antenna not only with low VSWR, but also miniaturizing the antenna at the same time. Our proposed optimization algorithm, real-coded compact genetic algorithm, RCCGA, has lowered the antenna area more than 48% compared to previous work for 3.1 to 11.7 GHz bandwidth operation. Design with the need for co-design and co-integration of the whole system the optimized antenna area is even more miniaturized and this paper explains in detail the trade off between antenna size, antenna performance and transceiver performance.

A Monolithically Integrated On-Chip Antenna in 0.18

A fully CMOS integrated impulse ultra wideband transmitter with monolithically on-chip antenna (OCA) for wireless identification is presented. Both OOK and BPSK modulation schemes are supported by the module. The chip is fabricated in standard 0.18µm CMOS technology. Direct measurement verifies the chip operation and wireless transmission measurement shows 7cm operation range with 1.2 pJ/pulse consumption at 10MPps, which is a huge improvement compared with related reported work with OCA.

\mu

In this paper, a modified small-size tapered monopole antenna is optimized for ultra wideband applications. Our optimization procedure aims at finding an antenna not only with low VSWR, but also miniaturizing the antenna at the same time. In addition, since in UWB communication pulse distortion between the receiver and the transmitter is very crucial the impulse responses of the designed antennae were considered. The optimization technique proposed here is a real-coded compact genetic algorithm, RCCGA, based on the probability density function of each variable. The final design of the antenna works from 3.1 to 11.7 GHz with 48% lower area compared to previous work.

m Standard CMOS Technology for Far-Field Short-Range Wireless Powering

Multi-objective synthesis for microwave components (e.g. integrated transformer, antenna) is in high demand. Since the embedded electromagnetic (EM) simulations make these tasks very computationally expensive when using traditional multi-objective synthesis methods, efficiency improvement is very important. However, this research is almost blank. In this paper, a new method, called Gaussian Process assisted multi-objective optimization with generation control (GPMOOG), is proposed. GPMOOG uses MOEA/D-DE as the multi-objective optimizer, and a Gaussian Process surrogate model is constructed ON-LINE to predict the results of expensive EM simulations. To avoid false optima for the on-line surrogate model assisted evolutionary computation, a generation control method is used. GPMOOG is demonstrated by a 60GHz integrated transformer, a 1.6GHz antenna and mathematical benchmark problems. Experiments show that compared to directly using a multi-objective evolutionary algorithm in combination with an EM simulator, which is the best known method in terms of solution quality, comparable results can be obtained by GPMOOG, but at about 1/3-1/4 of the computational effort.