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A CMOS front-end for RFID transponders using multiple coil antennas

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Abstract

A front-end architecture for inductive RFID transponders using multiple coil antennas for reduced orientation sensitivity is presented. The front-end uses multiple antennas for reception and one antenna for transmission. A select function identifies the antenna that is most favorably oriented toward the reader for transmission by comparing the DC charge-up phases of multiple DC generation blocks during power-up of the transponder. Design, simulations and measurement results of a front-end manufactured in 0.35 \(\upmu\)m CMOS for 125 kHz FSK modulation are presented for a pulsed RFID system as well as an architecture for cascaded DC generation. This paper also includes a design example of a coil antenna for spherical transponders using three independent orthogonal windings.

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Notes

  1. The possibility to use threshold cancellation technique in the MOS diodes to improve rectifier efficiency [22], has not been further studied as it is beyond the scope of this paper.

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Acknowledgments

This work was funded by the Hjalmar Lundbohm Research Centre (HLRC).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Eislab, Department of Computer Science, Electrical and Space Engineering, Luleå University of Technology, 971 87, Luleå, Sweden

    Hans Rabén, Johan Borg & Jonny Johansson

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  1. Hans Rabén
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  2. Johan Borg
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  3. Jonny Johansson
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Correspondence to Hans Rabén.

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Rabén, H., Borg, J. & Johansson, J. A CMOS front-end for RFID transponders using multiple coil antennas. Analog Integr Circ Sig Process 83, 149–159 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10470-015-0518-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10470-015-0518-y

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