24 GHz BiCMOS Single-Stage Rectifier

This paper presents a fully integrated 24 GHz single-stage rectifier which is designed for passive millimeter wave wireless systems on-chip. The rectifier is converting the RF power captured by the antenna into DC power necessary to supply the active components of a passive radio-frequency identification (RFID)-tag. By increasing the sensitivity of the rectifier, the read range of a passive RFID tag is maximized. The sensitivity is defined as the minimum input power necessary to achieve the output voltage with a given load. In the proposed work we target an output voltage of 1 V, a load of 200 kΩ and achieved a sensitivity of -14 dBm using a single-stage rectifier. The occupied chip size is 0.09 mm
²
, fabricated in a 130 nm BiCMOS technology. Furthermore, the used source pull technique is discussed, which is used to characterize the nonlinear time-variant rectifier in simulation and measurement.