A 90nm Passive RFID Tag's Custom Baseband Processor for Subthreshold Operation Below 0.3V

摘要

In the design of passive Radio frequency (RF) tags' baseband processor, subthreshold timing and wide-range-Process, voltage and temperature (PVT) varia-tion problems are the bottlenecks to extend the tag's work-ing range. A sophisticated processor is presented based on the EPC and ISO protocol. Power-aware ideas are applied to the entire processor, including data link portions. In-novatively, a novel custom ratioed logic style is adopted in critical logic paths to fundamentally speed up the cir-cuit operations at ultra-low-voltage. The proposed base-band processor was fabricated in 90nm CMOS, another baseband processor design by regular standard-cell-based design flow was also fabricated for comparison. In mea-surement the proposed design indicates good robustness in wide-range supply and frequency variation and much more competent for subthreshold operation. It can oper-ate at minimum 0.28V supply with power consumption of 129nW.