A 2 Kbits Low Power EEPROM for Passive RFID Tag IC

This paper presents a low power consumption and low cost electrically erasable programmable read-only memory (EEPROM) for radio frequency identification (RFID) tag chip. A read-write circuit with parallel input and serial output is proposed. Only one sensitive amplifier is used to read the data in memory, which can effectively reduce the power consumption of the read operation. Because the tag may be read or written while moving, the internal voltage may change in a wide range. Therefore, this paper designs a charge pump and its control circuit with wide voltage working range. The proposed EEPROM is integrated into an RFID tag chip and fabricated using a 180 nm complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) process. Experimental results show that the circuit can work in the input voltage range of 1 V to 1.8 V, and the minimum current of read operation and write operation is 0.68 μ A and 30 μ A respectively, which has the characteristic of low power consumption.