Resumen:
This work presents a nonius time to digital converter (TDC) adapted to a passive RF identification (RFID) pressure sensor tag. The proposed converter exploits the characteristics of time-based sensor interfaces and allows reducing voltage supply and power consumption while maintaining resolution and conversion efficiency. The nonius TDC has been designed and fabricated using the TSMC 90 nm standard CMOS technology. The main blocks of the converter are described and both the resolution adjustment and measurement processes are explained in detail. Measurement results show 10.49 bits of effective resolution for an input time range from 28.19 to 42.93 mu s. With a sampling rate of 19 KS/s the converter has a conversion efficiency of 0.395 pJ/bit with a voltage supply of only 0.6 V. This characteristics in the proposed nonius TDC enables an increased reading range of the passive RFID pressure sensor tag.
