Some practical considerations of RF to DC converter using low Vth CMOS rectifier

This paper presents a design of a high efficiency RF-DC converter which can operate at an RF input power of -20 dBm (10 μW) at 2.4 GHz. The design is done in UMC 130nm MM/RF CMOS technology. RF to DC Power Conversion Efficiency (PCE) is considered as the performance metric. Low Vth NMOS based Dickson Charge Pump(DCP) is used for RF-DC conversion, impedance matched to 50 Ω and the circuit parameters are optimized. Simulation results show that the circuit gives a DC output of 4.23 μW (42.3% PCE). A protection circuit to limit internal voltages at high RF input power is designed.