Biography
Enrollment Date: 2009
Graduation Date：2012
Degree：M.S.
Defense Date：2012.05.24
Advisors：Chun Zhang
Department：Institute of Microelectronics，Tsinghua University
Title of Dissertation/Thesis：Research and Design on Power Amplifier in a RF Front-end for UHF RFID Reader Applications
Abstract:
In the period of the World War II (September 1939 - September 1945), the British Army proposed the “Identification, Friend or Foe, IFF” technology to distinguish between the aircrafts flying into the UK airspace. Since then, the IFF developed and evolved into the “Radio Frequency Identification, RFID” technology. So far, the RFID technology has matured and got more and more concern from the fields of government, industry, business and many other areas. The concept of “Internet of Things, IoT”, which now has gained extensive reputation, is based on the concept of RFID. Also the RFID technology plays an important role in the technology framework of the IoT. Now, we are more frequently to meet the terms of “Internet of Things”, “RFID” and so on in the newspaper, on the internet or even in the company’s brand board. The technologies of IoT and RFID are used more and more widely in more and more areas and fields in the world. From the view of a country’s national security, IoT and RFID can be used in the management of cartridges, guns and any other munitions. From the point of the key industries with the properties of high-tech and high added value, IoT and RFID can be used in the anti-counterfeit recognition systems for the applications of the medical equipments management in the hospitals, the precious cultural relics’ management in the museums and the management of luxury goods for the international brands. As from the prospect of our daily life for consumers, the IoT and RFID technologies can also be used in the cashier systems in a supermarket or in the parcel tracking for a post office. A single-ended Class E Power Amplifier used in the front-end of an RFID Reader for UHF identification applications is proposed in the thesis. The Class E PA is composed of two stages, and in the second stage, there are an OOK modulator and a cascode circuit. After circuit design and simulation, the main part of the PA is finally integrated in the transmitter chain of our UHF RFID Reader chip. The whole chip is fabricated in a 0.18um RF CMOS process, and the die size of the PA is 0.92mm2. The test results show that the PA operates over the frequency of 840MHz to 960MHz, with a 1.8V and a 3V power supplies for the two stages respectively. The output power of the PA is around 20dBm and the PAE (Power Added Efficiency) is around 40% while the OOK modulator’s function and the RFID Reader system’s function are all right. It is worth mentioning that the layout is a main issue in the design of a PA. The concerned parasitic issues and lossy problems considered in the layout for a radio frequency PA is described in the thesis too.