Study On Design Of A Passive UHF RFID Transponder IC

Radio frequency identification (RFID), which is an emerging automatic identification technology, has the advantage of small size, high volume, long life and reusable. If the technology combines with the Internet and communications, it will be realized to track global goods and share their information. With the technology developing, its applications are multiplying rapidly. RFID is becoming a hot topic, and has very wide application fields.The design of a passive ultra high frequency (UHF) RFID transponder chip is researched in this dissertation. First, the RFID system structure and the fundamentals are discussed, and the relevant protocols are compared. Secondly, the system architecture of the passive UHF RFID transponder IC is analyzed and designed. The key design parameters of the UHF RFID transponder are presented and how to design a low-power and low-cost passive transponder IC is studied. Furthermore, a novel verification development platform for passive UHF RFID transponders is presented. Then, on the basis of the functional verification, the system architectures of the radio frequency analog front end (RF AFE) and the control logic circuit for the passive UHF RFID transponder are studied and designed with low-power design techniques. The RF AFE circuit includes rectifier, matching network, backscatter, regulator, AM demodulator, voltage reference, local oscillator and power on reset circuit, and so on. The control logic circuit contains clock synchronization module, decoding module, coding module, cyclic redundancy checksum (CRC) module, power management unit, control unit, shift register and memory.The low-power high-performance passive UHF RFID transponder IC is fabricated with Chartered 0.35μm two-poly four-metal (2P4M) CMOS process with Schottky diodes and EEPROM, which is compatible with the ISO/IEC 18000-6B standard. The testing results show that the chip's reading range is more than 3m at the 915 MHz ISM band with a total supply current consumption less than 10μA. Also, the current of the RF AFE circuit is less than 8μA, and the current of the control logic circuit is less than 2μA. The testing results of the chip are consistent with the simulation results. The transponder IC meets the requirements of the design specifications.