RF‐DC converter for HF RFID sensing applications powered by a near‐field loop antenna

Abstract

In this paper, an RF‐DC converter operating at 13.56 MHz (HF radio frequency identification (RFID) frequency band) is presented. Its architecture provides RF to load isolation, reducing the losses due to the reverse saturation current and improving the sensitivity. Fed by a loop antenna, the RF‐DC converter is made by a Dickson's RF‐DC rectifier and an additional Pelliconi's charge pump driven by a fully integrated 50 kHz ring oscillator realized using an application‐specific integrated circuit (ASIC). The input RF signal from the reader is converted to DC supply voltage and stored on a 1 μF capacitor. Mathematical model of the converter is developed and verified through measurements. Silicon prototypes of the ASIC have been realized in 350 nm complementary metal‐oxide semiconductor technology. Measurements have been done on 10 different samples showing an output voltage in the range of 0.5 V–3.11 V in correspondence of an RF input signal power in the range of −19 dBm–0 dBm. These output voltage levels are suitable to power HF RFID sensing platforms and sensor nodes of body sensor networks.

RF Energy Harvesting Using High Impedance Asymmetric Antenna Array Without Impedance Matching Network

“…Apart from RF energy, most of the other harvesting ambient energy such as solar, thermal and vibration are environment dependent that makes this technology more effective in critical applications such as intelligent environmental monitoring for office, healthcare, domotic, and defense etc. (Colella et al, 2016;Kuhn et al, 2015;Tran et al, 2017).Recently, WEH by using a passive device called rectifying antenna (rectenna) is a possible solution to change the environmental wireless energy to a usable DC power efficiently (…”

“…Apart from RF energy, most of the other harvesting ambient energy such as solar, thermal and vibration are environment dependent that makes this technology more effective in critical applications such as intelligent environmental monitoring for office, healthcare, domotic, and defense etc. (Colella et al, 2016;Kuhn et al, 2015;Tran et al, 2017).…”