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Design and fabrication of 2.4 GHz pre-biased rectifier

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Abstract

A 2.4 GHz rectifier operating in a region of low RF input power was developed. The rectifier has a cross-coupled bridge configuration and is driven by a differential RF input signal. Since a rectifier needs an RF signal higher than the threshold voltage of transistors, we introduced a pre-biasing circuit to compensate for the threshold voltage. A low-voltage digital circuit, subthreshold voltage regulator, and low-power level shifter were introduced for reducing the power consumption of the pre-biasing circuit and increasing the driving voltage for the switches at the same time. The circuit simulations revealed that the pre-biasing circuit was effective in a low RF input power region. However, the output voltage was degraded in a high power region. Then, we combined the pre-biased rectifier in parallel with a non-biased rectifier. Three types of rectifiers consisting of LC matching circuits, three-stage rectifier cells, and biasing circuits were designed and fabricated using a 0.18-μm mixed signal/RF CMOS process with one poly and six metal layers. The fabricated pre-biased rectifier operated in a region of RF input power of less than −15 dBm, while the non-biased rectifier could not operate in this region. The parallel combination of pre-biased and non-biased rectifiers effectively solved the drawback of the pre-biased rectifier in a high RF input power region.

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Acknowledgments

This work was partially supported by SCOPE and by VDEC in collaboration with Cadence Design Systems, Inc. and Agilent Technologies Japan, Ltd.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Research Center for Integrated Quantum Electronics, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, 060-8628, Japan

    Yutaro Otsu, Keishi Kubo & Eiichi Sano

  2. Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, 060-0814, Japan

    Masayuki Ikebe

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  1. Yutaro Otsu
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  2. Keishi Kubo
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  3. Masayuki Ikebe
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  4. Eiichi Sano
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Correspondence to Eiichi Sano.

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Otsu, Y., Kubo, K., Ikebe, M. et al. Design and fabrication of 2.4 GHz pre-biased rectifier. Analog Integr Circ Sig Process 79, 301–307 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10470-014-0256-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10470-014-0256-6

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