High-Efficiency Differential-Drive CMOS Rectifier for UHF RFIDs

A high-efficiency CMOS rectifier circuit for UHF RFIDs was developed. The rectifier has a cross-coupled bridge configuration and is driven by a differential RF input. A differential-drive active gate bias mechanism simultaneously enables both low ON-resistance and small reverse leakage of diode-connected MOS transistors, resulting in large power conversion efficiency (PCE), especially under small RF input power conditions. A test circuit of the proposed differential-drive rectifier was fabricated with 0.18 mu m CMOS technology, and the measured performance was compared with those of other types of rectifiers. Dependence of the PCE on the input RF signal frequency, output loading conditions and transistor sizing was also evaluated. At the single-stage configuration, 67.5% of PCE was achieved under conditions of 953 MHz, -12.5 dBm RF input and 10 K output load. This is twice as large as that of the state-of-the-art rectifier circuit. The peak PCE increases with a decrease in operation frequency and with an increase in output load resistance. In addition, experimental results show the existence of an optimum transistor size in accordance with the output loading conditions. The multi-stage configuration for larger output DC voltage is also presented.