A novel booster antenna design coupled to a one square millimeter coil-on-chip RFID tag enabling new medical applications

Abstract

This paper presents a novel passive RFID (Radio-Frequency Identification) booster technology to significantly increase the reading distance of small RFID Tags. Therefore, a one square millimeter RFID Tag with an on-chip-coil is designed and fabricated in a low cost 130nm CMOS process. In order to obtain a high inductance, the on-chip-coil windings are arranged upon each other over five different chip metal layers. Depending on the environment, the proposed booster antenna is able to increase the reading distance of this small RFID tag from two millimeter up to more than one meter. This technology offers new possibilities in the field of human health monitoring. While the small RFID tag can be used as implanted sensor node, the presented booster antenna is realized in the form of a plaster to increase the reading distance of the in-vivo device. Reading out a blood sugar value with an NFC (Near Field Communication) mobile phone is just one of many future applications.