5 mm Range 61 GHz System on Chip EPC Gen2 RFID tag in 22nm FD-SOI Technology

A complete mm-Wave System-on-Chip RFID tag based on the backscattering principle is presented. It is designed to operate at a 5 mm range. On-chip CPW-fed slot antenna has -1 dBi gain and is conjugate matched to the analog frontend (AFE). The analog frontend provides 0.4V at -3 dBm input power, while the modulator enables -12 dB reflection coefficient. The chip is fabricated in 22 nm SOI process on 7 Ohm.cm substrate thinned to 150um. The baseband circuitry is designed to operate at 0.4 V to increase the communication range. Its 0.5 uW protocol machine is EPC Gen 2 standard compatible, includes cryptography features and OTP memory. In addition, a broad range of practical issues covered, that pop up when designing an RFID system at mm-waves.