Low Power Radio Frequency Identification Design Using Custom Asynchronous Passive Computer

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is an emerging technology that can be researched and applied across various fields of engineering. It has scope for a wide range of applications not only for item tracking, but also for efficient item management and maintenance. Passive RFID tags are powered by an interrogator, and they communicate by amplitude modulating the back-scattered radio waves. Therefore the maximum distance at which the tag can be identified depends on the energy transfer between the interrogator and the tag. One solution to increase the maximum read range is to reduce the energy or power requirement of the tag. This paper concentrates on reducing the power requirement of such a tag. This is achieved by an asynchronous design of a custom lowpowered passive computer. This design considerably reduces the dynamic power consumption of the circuit and hence the RFID tag. The concepts introduced in this research article can be adapted to suit the system design conforming to any standard. Such a low power passive custom tag is designed and analyzed using ModelSim, Synopsys Design Compiler and Cadence Encounter— industry standard tools to prove the concept. The post-layout design is simulated to verify the logical operation. The power consumption of the asynchronous design is studied and compared to that of a fully synchronous design, which was also designed using the same tools and libraries.