Revistas
Revista:
IEEE SENSORS JOURNAL
ISSN:
1530-437X
Año:
2022
Vol.:
22
N°:
20
Págs.:
19797 - 19808
This article presents a wireless temperature sensor tag able to work in both fully passive mode and in semi-passive mode when assisted by a flexible thermoelectric generator (TEG). The sensor tag consists of an EPC C1G2/ISO 18000-6C ultrahigh-frequency (UHF) radio frequency identification (RFID) integrated circuit (IC) connected to a low-power microcontroller unit (MCU) that samples and collects the temperature from a digital temperature sensor. With a temperature gradient as low as 2.5 degrees C, the test results show that the TEG provides an output power of 400 mu W with an output voltage of 40 mV. By means of an up-converter in order to boost the TEG output voltage, this harvester supplies the power required to the sensor tag for a 2-conv/s data rate in semi-passive mode. Moreover, when the tag operates in semi-passive mode, a communication range of 22.2 m is measured for a 2-W effective radiated power (ERP) reader. To the best of our knowledge, the proposed TEG-assisted sensor tag shows the longest communication range and the only one that provides stable external power at low-temperature gradients. The measured performance and the chosen architecture allow using the wireless sensor in multiple industrial or biomedical applications.
Revista:
SENSORS
ISSN:
1424-8220
Año:
2022
Vol.:
22
N°:
20
Págs.:
7908
This work describes an energy-efficient monolithic Power Management Unit (PMU) that includes a charge pump adapted to photovoltaic cells with the capability of charging a large supply capacitor and managing the stored energy efficiently to provide the required supply voltage and power to low energy consumption wireless sensor nodes such as RFID sensor tags. The proposed system starts-up self-sufficiently with a light source luminosity equal to or higher than 500 lux using only a 1.42 cm(2) solar cell and integrating an energy monitor that gives the ability to supply autonomous sensor nodes with discontinuous operation modes. The system occupies an area of 0.97 mm(2) with a standard 180 nm CMOS technology. The half-floating architecture avoids losses of charging the top/button plate of the stray capacitors in each clock cycle. Measurements' results on a fabricated IC exhibit an efficiency above 60% delivering 13.14 mu W over 1.8 V. The harvested energy is enough to reach the communication range of a standard UHF RFID sensor tag up to 21 m.
Autores:
0000-0003-4431-7301; 0000-0003-4623-4382; dgolpe@tecnun.es; et al.
Revista:
MICROMACHINES
ISSN:
2072-666X
Año:
2020
Vol.:
11
N°:
11
Págs.:
1013
In this paper, a novel Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) tag for "pick to light" applications is presented. The proposed tag architecture shows the implementation of a novel voltage limiter and a supply voltage (VDD) monitoring circuit to guarantee a correct operation between the tag and the reader for the "pick to light" application. The feasibility to power the tag with different photovoltaic cells is also analyzed, showing the influence of the illuminance level (lx), type of source light (fluorescent, LED or halogen) and type of photovoltaic cell (photodiode or solar cell) on the amount of harvested energy. Measurements show that the photodiodes present a power per unit package area for low illuminance levels (500 lx) of around 0.08 mu W/mm(2), which is slightly higher than the measured one for a solar cell of 0.06 mu W/mm(2). However, solar cells present a more compact design for the same absolute harvested power due to the large number of required photodiodes in parallel. Finally, an RFID tag prototype for "pick to light" applications is implemented, showing an operation range of 3.7 m in fully passive mode. This operation range can be significantly increased to 21 m when the tag is powered by a solar cell with an illuminance level as low as 100 lx and a halogen bulb as source light.
Autores:
Villa, F. (Autor de correspondencia); Cortes, I.; Urain, A.; et al.
Revista:
IEEE ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION MAGAZINE
ISSN:
1045-9243
Año:
2019
Vol.:
61
N°:
4
Págs.:
90 - 96
This article presents the design of a complete radio system receiver to detect, in real time, the direction of arrival (DOA) of an incoming industrial, scientific, and medical (ISM)-band signal at 5.8 GHz. When a transmitter continuously sends a binary phase-shift keying (BPSK), modulated pseudo-noise (PN) code, the receiver estimates the DOA based on the received signal strength (RSS) and performs the channel sounding. The device that we describe includes a pattern-reconfigurable monopole antenna array, a front end, and a systemon-module (SOM). The SOM controls the antenna's main lobe direction by positive-intrinsic-negative (p-i-n) diode switching, configures the front-end modules, completes the data acquisition, and performs the digital signal processing (DSP) for the DOA estimation. The system has an average DOA resolution of 90° in the horizontal plane, with a success rate higher than 90%. It is presented as an educational platform for electrical engineering undergraduate and M.S. degree students.
Revista:
IEEE MICROWAVE AND WIRELESS COMPONENTS LETTERS
ISSN:
1531-1309
Año:
2019
Vol.:
29
N°:
5
Págs.:
351 - 353
This letter presents the design of a compact, wideband, and high-efficiency E-band power amplifier, integrated in a 0.13-mu m BiCMOS process and occupying 0.3 mm(2). It consists of a single-stage balanced amplifier, with HBT transistors in cascode configuration. The power amplifier (PA) is biased in class AB, with a dc consumption of 156 mW. A compact bias circuit is employed to achieve temperature robustness, while the layout is optimized for wideband and highly efficient operation. Measurements show a peak power gain of 15.3 dB at 83 GHz, with a 29.3% fractional bandwidth and less than 1-dB degradation over a 25 degrees C-85 degrees C temperature range. The peak output power at saturation and 1-dB compression is 18.6 and 13.6 dBm, respectively, and the maximum power-added efficiency (PAE) is 30.7%.
Revista:
IEEE SENSORS JOURNAL
ISSN:
1530-437X
Año:
2017
Vol.:
17
N°:
5
Págs.:
1471 - 1478
The number of wireless medical wearables has increased in recent years and is revolutionizing the current healthcare system. However, the state-of-the-art systems still need to be improved, as they are bulky, battery powered, and so require maintenance. On the contrary, battery-free wearables have unlimited lifetimes, are smaller, and are cheaper. This paper describes a design of a battery free wearable system that measures the skin temperature of the human body while at the same time collects energy from body heat. The system is composed of an UHF RFID temperature sensor tag located on the arm of the patient. It is assisted with extra power supply from a power harvesting module that stores the thermal energy dissipated from the neck of the patient. This paper presents the experimental results of the stored thermal energy, and characterizes the module in different conditions, e.g., still, walking indoors, and walking outdoors. Finally, the tag is tested in a fully passive condition and when it is power assisted. Our experimental results show that the communication range of the RFID sensor is improved by 100% when measurements are done every 750 ms and by 75% when measurements are done every 1000 ms when the sensor is assisted with the power harvesting module.
Revista:
INTEGRATION-THE VLSI JOURNAL
ISSN:
0167-9260
Año:
2016
Vol.:
52
Págs.:
208 - 216
This paper describes a method to design mmW PAs, by modeling the electromagnetic behavior of all the passive structures and the layout interconnections using a 3D-EM solver. It allows the optimization of the quality factor of capacitors (Q-factors > 20 can be obtained at 80 GHz), the access points and arrangement of the power transistor cells. The method is applied to the design and optimization of an E-Band PA implemented in a 55 nm SiGe BiCMOS technology. The PA presents a maximum power gain of 21.7 dB at 74 GHz, with a 3-dB bandwidth covering from 72.6 to 75.6 GHz. The maximum output P1dB is 13.8 dBm at 75 GHz and the peak PAE is 14.1%. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Revista:
SENSORS
ISSN:
1424-8220
Año:
2015
Vol.:
15
N°:
9
Págs.:
21554 - 21566
This paper presents an ultra low-power and low-voltage pulse-width modulation based ratiometric capacitive sensor interface. The interface was designed and fabricated in a standard 90 nm CMOS 1P9M technology. The measurements show an effective resolution of 10 bits using 0.5 V of supply voltage. The active occupied area is only 0.0045 mm(2) and the Figure of Merit (FOM), which takes into account the energy required per conversion bit, is 0.43 pJ/bit. Furthermore, the results show low sensitivity to PVT variations due to the proposed ratiometric architecture. In addition, the sensor interface was connected to a commercial pressure transducer and the measurements of the resulting complete pressure sensor show a FOM of 0.226 pJ/bit with an effective linear resolution of 7.64 bits. The results validate the use of the proposed interface as part of a pressure sensor, and its low-power and low-voltage characteristics make it suitable for wireless sensor networks and low power consumer electronics.
Revista:
HEALTH AND TECHNOLOGY
ISSN:
2190-7188
Año:
2013
Vol.:
3
N°:
2
Págs.:
99 - 109
Revista:
MICROELECTRONICS JOURNAL
ISSN:
0026-2692
Año:
2012
Vol.:
43
N°:
10
Págs.:
708 - 713
This paper presents a low power voltage limiter design for avoiding possible damages in the analog front-end of a RFID sensor due to voltage surges whenever readers and tags are close. The proposed voltage limiter design takes advantage of the implemented bandgap reference and voltage regulator blocks in order to provide low deviation of the limiting voltage due to temperature variation and process dispersion. The measured limiting voltage is 2.9 V with a voltage deviation of only +/- 0.065 V for the 12 measured dies. The measured current consumption is only 150 nA when the reader and the tag are far away, not limiting the sensitivity of the tag due to an undesired consumption in the voltage limiter. The circuit is implemented on a low cost 2P4M 0.35 mu m CMOS technology. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Revista:
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MICROWAVE THEORY AND TECHNIQUES
ISSN:
0018-9480
Año:
2011
Vol.:
59
N°:
9
Págs.:
2318 - 2330
A decreasing-sized pi-model electrostatic discharge (ESD) protection structure is presented and applied to protect against ESD stresses at the RF input pad of an ultra-low power CMOS front-end operating in the 2.4-GHz industrial-scientific-medical band. The proposed ESD protection structure is composed of a pair of ESD devices located near the RF pad, another pair close to the core circuit, and a high-quality integrated inductor connecting these two pairs. This structure can sustain a human body-model ESD level higher than 16 kV and a machine-model ESD level higher than 1 kV without degrading the RF performance of the front-end. A combined on-wafer transmission line pulse and RF test methodology for RF circuits is also presented confirming previous results. The front-end implements a zero-IF receiver. It has been implemented in a standard 2P6M 0.18-mu m CMOS process. It exhibits a voltage gain of 24 dB and a single-sideband noise figure of 8.4 dB, which make it suitable for most of the 2.4-GHz wireless short-range communication transceivers. The power consumption is only 1.06 mW from a 1.2-V voltage supply.
Revista:
IET MICROWAVES ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION
ISSN:
1751-8725
Año:
2011
Vol.:
5
N°:
7
Págs.:
795 - 803
A model for fully integrated CMOS linear power amplifiers (PAs) is presented. The model predicts the performance of the CMOS PA in terms of power-added efficiency (PAE) and output power (P-OUT) with respect to the main design parameters, such as supply voltage, current consumption, gain and inductor quality factors (Qs). In order to demonstrate the usefulness of the model, several studies showing the impact of these design parameters on the PA performance are presented. Finally, a 0.18 mu m fully integrated CMOS PA has been fabricated and compared with the model, showing good agreement. The fabricated PA presents 23 dBm of 1 dB compression point (P-1dB) and 27 dBm of saturated power (P-SAT) at 4.2 GHz with high maximum PAE of 32%.
Revista:
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMS II-EXPRESS BRIEFS
ISSN:
1549-7747
Año:
2010
Vol.:
57
N°:
2
Págs.:
95 - 99
A long-range UHF RF identification (RFID) sensor has been designed using a 0.35-mu m CMOS standard process. The power-optimized tag, combined with the ultralow-power temperature sensor, allows an ID and a temperature reading range of 2 m from a 2-W effective radiated power output power reader. The temperature sensor is based on a ring oscillator, where the temperature dependence of the oscillation frequency is used for thermal sensing. The temperature sensor exhibits a resolution of 0.035 degrees C and an inaccuracy value lower than 0.1 degrees C in the range from 35 degrees C to 45 degrees C after two-point calibration. The average power consumption of the temperature sensor is only 110 nW at ten conversions per second while keeping a high resolution and accuracy. These properties allow the use of the RFID as a batteryless sensor in a wireless human body temperature monitoring system.
Capítulos de libros
Libro:
Systems Design for Remote Healthcare
Lugar de Edición:
Nueva York
Editorial:
Ed. Springer
Año:
2014
Págs.:
55 - 92
The four physiological measures of body temperature, pulse rate, respiration rate and blood pressure have for a long time been considered as vital signs in the diagnosis of a patient¿s health. It is also widely accepted that the routine measurement of other physiological or biological signals, possibly pathology specific, would help considerably in diagnosis and early stage treatment. Such measurements might include, for example, heart activity, brain activity, blood glucose level or mobility. Furthermore, the development of portable systems that can make a number of different health related measurements would prove beneficial in the monitoring of patients during treatment, recovery or rehabilitation. Technologies and instruments that can make these measurements have existed for some time, but factors such as their cost, lack of portability and in some instances, a requirement for expert knowledge, have restricted their wide scale use. Today, however, advances in information technology, communications and microfabrication techniques have made possible the realisation of truly portable systems for the measurement of a wide range of physiological signs at any medical intervention. This chapter describes the sensing technologies and systems currently being developed, or that are in use, for the measurement of a new, larger range of vital signs