A novel 6.5 pJ/pulse impulse radio pulse generator for RFID tags

A novel impulse radio (IR) ultra wideband (UWB) pulse generator (PG) intended for RFID tags is presented. A new pulse-shaping approach suited for CMOS implementation is proposed. The power consumption and chip area are reduced compared to the conventional higher order Gaussian PGs. The proposed PG uses digital gates for timing achieving good power efficiency and, meanwhile, acceptable spectral filling. The circuit is scalable both in bandwidth and center frequency. The PG is designed in a TSMC 90 nm CMOS technology. Post-layout simulations show a worst-case power consumption from a 1.2 V supply to be 6.5 pJ/pulse for a 100 MHz pulse repetition frequency (PRF). The chip area is 0.00079 mm² (38.2 μm × 20.8 μm) for the PG core.